Rate My Professor Douglas Brine

Douglas Brine, Ph.D., is Department Chair and Professor in the Department of Art and Art History at Trinity University, positions he has held since joining the faculty in 2009. He also directs Architectural Studies and participates in Medieval and Renaissance Studies and Museum Studies. Brine received his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. in History of Art from the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London. His doctoral research examined the art of commemoration in the Burgundian Netherlands, centering on Netherlandish wall-mounted memorials, known as epitaphs, and their connections to contemporary paintings, particularly those by Jan van Eyck.

Brine's research specializes in the visual arts of northern Europe during the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, emphasizing sculpture, painting, and metalwork from the Low Countries. His ongoing book project, Brazen Splendors: The Art of Brass in the Burgundian Netherlands, explores the creation and meaning of brass sculpture in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. He maintains a secondary interest in the Gothic Revival in nineteenth-century England and the contributions of architect and theorist Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin. His work has been supported by fellowships at the Courtauld Research Forum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art via the J. Clawson Mills Scholarship, and the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art. Brine's first monograph, Pious Memories: The Wall-Mounted Memorial in the Burgundian Netherlands, appeared in Brill's Studies in Netherlandish Art and Cultural History series in 2015. Key publications include 'Jan van Eyck, Canon Joris van der Paele, and the Art of Commemoration' in The Art Bulletin (2014), recipient of the 2015 Arthur Kingsley Porter Prize from the College Art Association; 'Reflection and Remembrance in Jan van Eyck’s Van der Paele Virgin' in Art History (2018); 'Working Sculpture: The Forms and Functions of Netherlandish Brass Lecterns' in Taking Shape: Sculpture of the Low Countries, c.1400–1600 (Brepols, 2024); and 'The Tomb of Louis of Mâle and the Materiality of Brass in the Burgundian Netherlands' in Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte (2025). Other significant contributions feature 'Evidence for the Forms and Usage of Early Netherlandish Memorial Paintings' in the Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes (2008) and essays on Rogier van der Weyden and Tournai painting.