Carl Winter

Dates of office: 1946 - 1966

Carl Winter (10 January 1906–21 May 1966) was a British art historian and museum curator. He worked at the Victoria & Albert Museum's collection of English watercolours and miniature portraits before moving to the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge in 1946 following the end of the Second World War.

Winter was born in Melbourne,Victoria, Australia, the son of Carl Winter and his wife Ethel (née Hardy). He was educated at Xavier College and Newman College, University of Melbourne. He came to England in 1928 and attended Exeter College, Oxford.

He married Theodora (née Barlow) in 1936; they had two sons and a daughter, but were divorced in 1953.

He was appointed as an Assistant Keeper in the Departments of Engraving, Illustration and Design, and of Paintings, at the Victoria and Albert Museum 1931, where he worked with Basil Long, leading the department after Long's death in 1936. He was appointed as Deputy Keeper at the V&A in 1945, but moved to become Director and Marlay Curator at the Fitzwilliam Museum in 1946, and also a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, where he remained until his death in 1966. He published 'Elizabethan Miniatures' in 1943, and 'The British School of Miniature Portrait Painters' in 1948.

Along with Patrick Trevor-Roper and Peter Wildeblood, Winter gave evidence to the Wolfenden Committee, whose report led in 1967 to the decriminalisation of sex between adult male homosexuals. He gave evidence anonymously as 'Mr White'. His testimony to the Committee has been portrayed on-screen in the BBC drama,'Consenting Adults'.