Deane Keller (portraitist)
Deane Keller BEM (December 14, 1901 – April 12, 1992) was an American artist, academic, soldier, art restorer, and preservationist. He taught for forty years at Yale University's School of Fine Arts and during World War II was an officer with the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program.
This article is about the portraitist and MFAA officer. For his son, a draftsman and professor of fine arts, see Deane Keller (draftsman).
Deane Keller
December 14, 1901
April 12, 1992 (aged 90)
American
Yale University
Portraiture
Traditional
Prix de Rome (1926)
Legion of Merit (1946)
British Empire Medal (1945)
Biography[edit]
Keller was born in New Haven, Connecticut in 1901.[1] His father, Albert Galloway Keller, was a member of the junior faculty at Yale; but during young Deane's formative years, his father would become the first William Graham Sumner Professor of Sociology.[2] Keller attended the Taft School in Watertown, Connecticut, graduating in 1919.[3]
As a student at Yale, he earned degrees in history and science in 1923. Further studies led to a B.F.A. from the Yale School of Fine Arts in 1926.[1] Keller was awarded the Gran Prix de Rome in 1926.[4] He was a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome (FAAR) for three years.[1] During his time in Rome, he painted a portrait of sculptor Joseph Kiselewski wwho was a Fellow at the same time.[5] After returning from Rome in 1929, Keller began his career as a member of the Yale faculty.[6]
His academic career was interrupted by the Second World War, when he was asked by School of Fine Arts dean Theodore Sizer to serve as a fine arts officer in the U.S. Army's Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program. At war's end, he returned to teach at Yale's School of Fine Arts.[6] In total, Keller taught at Yale for forty years, retiring in 1979, and was also professor emeritus of painting at the Paier College of Art.[3][6]
Keller married Katherine Parkhurst Hall in 1938. He had two sons, Deane G. Keller, 1940 – 2005, and William Keller, born in 1950.[6]
Keller was posthumously recognized for his wartime activities. He was the first to enter Pisa liberated from Nazi, 2 Sept.1944, with the partisan Pierino Fornaciari, liaison officer, with whom he rescued many art works, in particular in the Camposanto Monumentale. His remains were apportioned and interred in New Britain, Connecticut and the Camposanto Monumentale in Pisa; that site is identified with an engraved marble slab.[9]