Obituary of Jane Campbell Hutchison

Professor Emerita Jane Campbell Hutchison, 87, an expert in the history of Northern European art, died July 12, 2020, at her home in Chevy Chase, MD.  She taught art history at the University of Wisconsin from 1964 until her retirement in 2012.

Born in Washington, DC, July 20, 1932, Professor Hutchison grew up in District Heights, MD, attending public schools in the area. She was a graduate of Western Maryland College, Oberlin College, and the University of Wisconsin, and a Fulbright Fellow at the Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht in the Netherlands.  Professor Hutchison was a noted authority on northern European art of the 15^th through 17^th Centuries, with particular expertise in engravings and drawings. Her expertise was relied on for paid consultancies for the National Gallery of Art as well as major museums in Cincinnati, Amsterdam, and Frankfurt. She was also called as an expert witness for the US District Court for the Southern District of New York in an art forgery trial in 2000.

She wrote three books. Her second book, Albrecht Duerer: A Biography (Princeton, 1990), was so well reviewed in Germany that German and Japanese translations were published.

Professor Hutchison’s career accomplishments included many other publications, lectures, and exhibition catalogues. She was awarded several research grants and served in leadership positions in organizations within as well as outside of her professional field. She grew to leadership in an academic field in which there were very few successful women at the time. What she was most proud of however were the seventeen Masters theses and eleven PhD dissertations she supervised and those students whose lives and careers she was able to enrich. Students came from as far away as South Korea to work with her. She never retired from assisting them in their careers, and her alumni have obtained teaching posts throughout the US and in South Korea.

Upon her retirement from teaching in 2012 Professor Hutchison returned to the Washington area to be nearer her family, residing in Chevy Chase MD.

Students, colleagues, friends, and family will all remember her for her dry wit.

Her interests were exceptionally wide and varied, from theater, opera, music, politics, and history to mysteries, cooking, and hockey.

Professor Hutchison is survived by a sister, Ann Hutchison Lung, and brother, James W. Hutchison, as well as two nieces and a nephew and their children. A memorial service will be planned for a later date. Contributions to your favorite charity are requested in lieu of flowers.