Robert L. Herbert, 91, Dies; Saw Impressionism With a Fresh Eye A distinguished art historian at Yale, he illuminated the paintings of Seurat, Monet and others by regarding them through a social lens. The pioneering art historian Robert L. Herbert in 1972. In a teaching career that spanned six decades, he was a prolific writer, editor and curator.Credit...via Herbert family By Richard B. Woodward Feb. 8, 2021 Robert L. Herbert, a pioneering scholar of 19th-century art whose 1988 history of Impressionism, viewed through a social lens, delivered a robust transfusion to the study of that period, died on Dec. 17 in Northampton, Mass. He was 91.