Élie Faure

Jacques Élie Faure was a French medical doctor who became far better known as an art historian and essayist. He was born on 4 April 1873 in Sainte-Foy-la-Grande and died on 29 October 1937 in Paris. He was called the greatest art critic of the 1920s and 30s, and his History of Art is regarded as a historiographical pillar of the discipline of art history. For a record of healers he is a useful example of a trained physician whose lasting public reputation came from writing about art rather than from clinical work, and the sources consulted say nothing further about the medicine he practised.