Researching to Write an Artist's Biography

Resources to Utilise When Investigating the World of Art

Oct 9, 2008

For a biography subject with easy research guaranteed then the savvy writer will choose an artist and make the long trawl of researching an enjoyable experience

Researching an artist, whether contemporary or historical, can be easier than researching any other person. Unlike military people there is no classified information. Unlike everyday non-famous people there is a wealth of easily traceable information. Unlike celebrities there is not a raft of media gossip.

So once a writer makes a plan of action it can be easy and enjoyable researching to write a biography of an artist.

Find Out The Artist's Name

Many historical artists are known by more than one name and so thorough research should be done on all variations. This can be especially important to establish with artists who have medieval names or names that have been translated from languages which have their own alphabet such as Russian, Japanese or Chinese.

First Basic Details to Find Out

Once a researcher has established the name or names to investigate the next basics to find out are the artist's date of birth, date of marriage, date of death, details of any children, the dates the artist was active, the artistic period/ school/ style they fit into and the names and dates of their most pivotal works.

To get this information there is no better place to start than the internet. Here can be found the most famous works of the artist and a lot of the information mentioned above. It is important to use this merely as a basis though as many sites, such as Wikipedia, have various uncredited and unvetted contributors so any information derived from this source can be a great start but should not be assumed to be 100% accurate.

Art Encyclopaedia Websites

There are two great internet based resources for beginning research. The first is “Art Net” where some basic dates and details of literary works and exhibitions of thousands of artists can be found along with many images of their works that have previously gone to auction. The second is “Artcyclopedia” where some further information on the artist can be found along with images and details of all of the artist's publically displayed works and the museum or gallery which displays it.

Most famous artists will also have a website dedicated to them and their works so it is worth putting their name into your internet search engine to see what comes up. If they do have a website then this can help you to make some useful contacts.

Further Artistic Research Resources

Good place to start is a research library. Here writers can get some basic information from biography dictionaries which will give the basic information which will provide a foundation for more in depth research. The research libraries will also hold any biographies already written about the artist. It is also worth looking up any books which may contain pictures and critiques of their works such as books on art or architecture in the period they worked and also any literary works by them as many artists, especially in the Renaissance and Pre-Raphaelite periods, were also scientists, architects, inventors or writers.

The types of information a researcher should look out for when visiting the library are are;

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