Wayne Franits

Distinguished Professor

Art History

Art and Music Histories

Medieval and Renaissance Studies

308 B Bowne Hall

315.443.5038

wefranit@syr.edu

Research and Teaching Interests

Wayne Franits is a specialist in seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish art. His extensive publications have explored a variety of topics within the field, ranging from genre painting and portraiture to the work of the Dutch followers of Caravaggio. Franits's courses, particularly those on the M.A. level, tend to be tied to his research interests. In recent years, Franits has published books on the early seventeenth-century Dutch painters, Johannes Vermeer (2015) and Godefridus Schalcken (2018) as well as The Ashgate Research Companion to Dutch Art of the Seventeenth Century (2016).

He is currently pursuing research on late seventeenth-century art collections in English country houses, on Theodoor Rombouts’s portrayal of himself in his paintings, and on the art of Rembrandt during his early career in relation to contemporary genre painting.

Wayne Franits standing in front of large painting.

Education

Ph. D. Art History, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, 1987

M. A. Art History, Queens College, City University of New York, 1981

B. A. Art History, State University of New York @ Stonybrook, 1978

Courses

Undergraduate

Paper Arts in the Low Countries, 1400-1700
Baroque Art in Northern Europe
Baroque Art in Southern Europe
Art in Eighteenth-Century Europe
Seventeenth-Century Dutch Painting

Graduate

Problems of Meaning and Interpretation in Northern European Art, 1400-1700
Paper Arts in the Low Countries, 1400-1700
Seventeenth-Century Dutch Painting
Vermeer and Dutch Genre Painting
Rembrandt and His Workshop
Caravaggio and Caravaggism in Europe
Art & Patronage in England, 1558-1702

Books

Godefridus Schalcken; A Dutch Painter in Late Seventeenth-Century London

Godefridus Schalcken; A Dutch Painter in Late Seventeenth-Century London, by Wayne Franits, Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Press, 2018, 288 pp., 86 color illus.
The Ashgate Research Companion to Dutch Art of the Seventeenth Century

The Ashgate Research Companion to Dutch Art of the Seventeenth-Century, by Wayne Franits, New York/ London: Routledge, 2016, xx + 478 pp., 91 black-and-white illus.
Vermeer

Vermeer, by Wayne Franits, London: Phaidon Press Limited, 2015, 352 pp., 124 color illus.
The Paintings of Dirck van Baburen (ca. 1592/93–1624): Catalogue Raisonné

The Paintings of Dirck van Baburen ca. 1592/93-1624: Catalogue Raisonné, by Wayne Franits, Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2013, xx, 388 pp., 114 black-and-white illus., 15 color illus.
The Paintings of Hendrick ter Brugghen (1588–1629): Catalogue raisonné

The Paintings of Hendrick ter Brugghen 1588-1629: Catalogue Raisonné, by Wayne Franits, [Co-author with Leonard J. Slatkes], Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2007, xix + 468 pp., 204 black-and-white illus., 17 color illus.
Pieter de Hooch: A Woman Preparing Bread and Butter for a Boy

Pieter de Hooch: A Woman Preparing Bread and Butter for a Boy (Getty Museum Studies of Art), by Wayne Franits, Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2006, 86 pp., 24 black-and-white illus., 34 color illus.
Dutch Seventeenth-Century Genre Painting: Its Stylistic and Thematic Evolution

Dutch Seventeenth-Century Genre Painting: Its Stylistic and Thematic Evolution, by Wayne Franits, London/ New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004, viii + 328 pp., 166 black-and-white illus., 70 color illus.
The Cambridge Companion to Vermeer

The Cambridge Companion to Vermeer, by Wayne E. Franits (Editor) Cambridge/ New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001, xxiv + 241 pp., 103 black-and-white illus., fold-out map. An edited collection of 10 reprinted and new essays concerning the art and life of Johannes Vermeer (1632-75); published in hardback and paperback simultaneously.
Looking at Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art: Realism Reconsidered

Looking at Seventeenth-Century Dutch Painting; Realism Reconsidered, by Wayne Franits (editor), Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997, xviii + 274 pp., 122 black-and-white illus. An edited collection of 14 reprinted and new essays addressing problems of realism, meaning and interpretation in seventeenth-centuryDutch painting.
Paragons of Virtue: Women and Domesticity in 17th Century Dutch Art

Paragons of Virtue; Women and Domesticity in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art, by Wayne Franits, Cambridge/ New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993, xx + 271 pp., 172 black-and-white illus.

Recent Essays

"Honour and Shame in Dutch Seventeenth-Century Art and Culture," by Wayne Franits, in: Questioning Pictorial Genres in Dutch Seventeenth-Century Art, ed. M. Osnabrugge, Turnhout: Brepols, 2021, pp. 331-51.

”Genreschilderskunst,” in: De zeventiende eeuw, ed. by J. Noorman et al. Leiden: Leiden University Press 2021, pp. 357-76.

“A New Painting by Hendrick ter Brugghen,” by Wayne Franits, The Burlington Magazine 163 (September 2021), pp. 806-811.

"Rembrandt and the Convention of the Scholar in Dutch Genre Painting," [Wayne Franits and Laura Thiel-Convery] in exhib. cat. Rembrandt: Portrait of a Man, Prague, National Gallery of Prague, 2020, pp. 33-45.

"A Bravo Examining Cheese: A 'New' Painting by Gerrit van Honthorst." In: Connoisseurship: Essays in Honour of Fred G. Meijer, Leiden: Primavera Pers, 2020, pp. 135-39.

Wayne Franits "'Keine Mühe der Welt gleicht dem Studium': Rembrandt und die Bildkonvention des Gelehrten in der niederländischen Genremalerei," in exhib. cat. Inside Rembrandt 1606-1669, Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, 2019-20, pp. 29-41 (co-authored with Laura E. Thiel-Convery).

Recent Awards, Honors, Grants

2017 Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art (London), subvention to underwrite the production costs of publication for Godefridus Schalcken; A Dutch Painter in Late Seventeenth-Century London, Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Press.

2014 American Philosophical Society, for research on the London period of the late seventeenth-century Dutch painter, Godefridus Schalcken.