Julius Samuel Held is considered one of the foremost authorities on the works of Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony van Dyck, and Rembrandt. Held began his academic career in 1935 as a lecturer in art history at the New York University. In 1937 he was hired as a lecturer at Barnard College, Columbia University, where he was appointed assistant professor in 1944, advanced to associate professor in 1950, full professor in 1954, and served as chairman of the Art History Department from 1967 to 1970. In 1971 Held retired from Barnard College and moved from New York to Bennington, Vermont, where he continued to teach for ten years as Clark Professor of Art in the graduate program for art history at Williams College, and at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Held's classical education influenced his approach to art history. At the time when the discipline was favoring iconography and other more "empirical" methods of study, Held maintained the primacy of connoisseurship as one of the tools of the art historian.
historian's relations
Held, J. & Goris. J. A. (1947). Rubens in America. New York: Pantheon
Held, J. (1969). Rembrandt's Aristotle and other Rembrandt studies. Princeton: Princeton University Press
Held, J. (1980). Oil sketches of Peter Paul Rubens. Princeton: Princeton University Press