Matthew Prichard (1865–1936)

Matthew Stewart Prichard was a British amateur art historian, classicist, and Byzantinist. He was born on January 4, 1865, in Keynsham, England. In 1902, he became the secretary to the director of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Prichard worked as a classical antiquities specialist for the museum and, by 1904, as assistant director. In 1930, he financially supported and anonymously wrote portions of Thomas Whittemore’s first and second preliminary reports on the Byzantine mosaics discovered at Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. Prichard died in England on October 15, 1936.

Robert S. Nelson, Hagia Sophia, 1850–1950: Holy Wisdom Modern Movement (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 159–61.

Dictionary of Art Historians, s.v., "Prichard, Matthew Stewart."