John Beazley - Academic Career

Academic Career

After graduating, Beazley spent time at the British School at Athens. He the returned to University of Oxford as a student and tutor in Classics at Christ Church.

During World War One, Beazley served in military intelligence. For most of the war he worked in Room 40 of the Admiralty's Naval Intelligence Division. He held the temporary rank of second lieutenant from March to October 1916 when he was on secondment to the army.

In 1925, he became Lincoln Professor of Classical Archaeology and Art at the University of Oxford., a position he held until 1956. He specialised in Greek decorated pottery (particularly black-figure and red-figure), and became a world authority on the subject. He adapted the art-historical method initiated by Giovanni Morelli to attribute the specific "hands" (style) of specific workshops and artists, even where no signed piece offered a name, e.g. the Berlin Painter, whose production he first distinguished. He looked at the sweep of classical pottery—major and minor pieces—to construct a history of workshops and artists in ancient Athens. The first English edition of his book, Attic Red-figure Vase-painters, appeared in 1942 (in German as Attische Vasenmaler des rotfigurigen Stils, 1925).