John Walker McCoubrey, 86, art history professor

John Walker McCoubrey, 86, an emeritus professor in the department of art history at the University of Pennsylvania, died of kidney failure Tuesday at his home in University City.

Dr. McCoubrey was awarded a Lindback Foundation Award for Distinguished Teaching just four years after joining Penn's faculty in 1964. That same year he received a Guggenheim Fellowship to study in London. He had previously studied in Paris on a Fulbright Fellowship. He was also recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Dr. McCoubrey became Penn's first James and Nan Farquhar Professor of the History of Art in 1988, and for several years was the chairman of the department. He retired in 1995.

He was a "dear friend" to all of his colleagues, current department chair Holly Pittman said. "He could contribute wonderful, insightful remarks to any intellectual discourse," she said.

Dr. McCoubrey wrote widely on American, English, and French art of the 18th through the 20th centuries. His doctoral dissertation was on French still-life painting, and he was an authority on the British landscape painter J.M.W. Turner. He was the editor of American Art 1700-1960 and wrote the influential American Tradition in Painting.

In the latter book, published in 1963, Dr. McCoubrey tried to answer the question, "What is distinctively American about American painting?" He focused on American qualities that appear not only among abstract expressionists such as Jackson Pollock and Franz Kline, but also among early portrait painters such as John Singleton Copley and Charles Willson Peale.

When American Tradition in Painting was reissued in 1999, sociologist Richard Sennett wrote, "The reappearance of this book is an event in American studies, the resurrection of a classic."

In 1970, Dr. McCoubrey wrote the introductory essay of the catalog for an exhibit, "Highways," at Penn's Institute of Contemporary Art. The exhibit included paintings, photos, sculptures, a racing car, a customized motorcycle, billboards, and neon signs. In his essay, he noted that American artists had never distinguished between subjects fit for high art and those relegated to popular art.

Dr. McCoubrey served on the boards of the Institute of Contemporary Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. He was a member of the Philadelphia Museum of Art's painting and sculpture committee and its committee for 20th-century art.

A native of Watertown, Mass., he served in the Navy in the Pacific during World War II.

After his discharge, he returned to his studies at Harvard University, where he earned a bachelor's degree in 1947. He then earned a doctorate from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University. For seven years he taught art history at Yale University.

Dr. McCoubrey and his wife, Bettsy Morse McCoubrey, a clinical and counseling psychologist, lived in Swarthmore before moving in 1970 to University City, where they renovated a Victorian brownstone.

He enjoyed traveling abroad, sketching, painting watercolors, and playing the recorder.

In addition to his wife of 62 years, Dr. McCoubrey is survived by sons Stephen, Daniel, John, and Peter; daughters Sarah and Hannah; a brother, David; and 13 grandchildren.

Services are private.

Memorial donations may be made to the John McCoubrey and Malcolm Campbell Student Travel Funds, History of Art Department, University of Pennsylvania, Jaffe Building, Philadelphia 19104.