Sir Ernst Hans Josef Gombrich, OM, CBE (30 March 1909 – 3 November 2001) was an Austrian-born art historian who spent most of his working life in the United Kingdom. He is the author of many works of art criticism and art history, including The Story of Art, a book regarded as one of the most accessible introductions to the visual arts.
The son of Karl Gombrich and Leonie Hock, Gombrich was born in Vienna, Austria-Hungary, into an assimilated bou...
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Sir Ernst Hans Josef Gombrich, OM, CBE (30 March 1909 – 3 November 2001) was an Austrian-born art historian who spent most of his working life in the United Kingdom. He is the author of many works of art criticism and art history, including The Story of Art, a book regarded as one of the most accessible introductions to the visual arts.
The son of Karl Gombrich and Leonie Hock, Gombrich was born in Vienna, Austria-Hungary, into an assimilated bourgeois family of Jewish origin who were part of a sophisticated social and musical milieu. His father was a lawyer and former classmate of Hugo von Hofmannsthal and his mother, a distinguished concert pianist, had been a pupil of Anton Bruckner. She also knew Arnold Schoenberg, Gustav Mahler and Johannes Brahms. Rudolf Serkin was a close family friend.
Gombrich was educated at Theresianum Secondary School and at Vienna University before coming to Britain in 1936, where he took up a post as a research assistant at the Warburg Institute,...
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