HAMERTON, PHILIP GILBERT (1834-1894)

This article appears in Volume V12, Page 877 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: GUI-HAN

HAMERTON, PHILIP GILBERT (1834-1894) , English artist and author, was born at Laneside, near Shaw, close to Oldham, on the loth of September 1834. His mother died at his

birth

BIRTH (a word common in various forms to Teutonic languages from the root of the verb " to bear ")

, and having lost his father ten years afterwards, he was educated privately under the direction of his guardians. His first literary attempt, a volume of poems, proving unsuccessful, he devoted himself for a time entirely to landscape painting, encamping out of doors in the Highlands, where he eventually rented the

island

ISLAND (O.E. ieg =isle, +land')

of Innistrynych, upon which he settled with his wife, a French lady, in 1858. Discovering after a time that his qualifications were rather those of an art critic than of a painter he removed to the neighbourhood of his wife's relatives in France, where he produced his Painter's Camp in the Highlands (1863), which obtained a

great

GREAT

success and prepared the way for his standard

work

WORK

on Etching and Etchers (1866). In the following year he published a book, entitled Contemporary French Painters, and in 1868 a continuation, Painting in France after the Decline of Classicism. He had meanwhile become art critic to the Saturday

Review

REVIEW (Fr. revue, from revoir, to see again, Lat. re and videre)

, a position which, from the burden it laid upon him of frequent visits to England, he did not long retain. He proceeded (187o) to establish an art journal of his own, The Portfolio, a monthly periodical, each number of which consisted of a monograph upon-some artist or group of artists, frequently written and always edited by him. The discontinuance of his active

work

WORK

as a painter gave him time for more general literary composition, and he successively produced The Intellectual Life (1873), perhaps the best known and most valuable of his writings; Round my

House

HOUSE
HOUSE (O. Eng. hiss, a word common to Teutonic languages, cf. Dut. huis, Ger. Haus; in
Gothic
- GOTHIC
it is only found in gudhiss, a temple; it may be ultimately connected with the root of " hide," conceal)

(1876), notes on French society by a

resident

RESIDENT

; and Modern Frenchmen (1879), admirable short

biographies

BIOGRAPHIES

. He also wrote two novels, Wenderholme (1870) and Marmorne (1878). In 1884 Human Intercourse, another valuable volume of essays, was published, and shortly afterwards Hamerton began to write his autobiography, which he brought down to 1858. In 1882 he issued a finely illustrated work on the technique of the

great

GREAT

masters of various arts, under the title of The Graphic Arts, and three years later another splendidly illustrated volume, Landscape, which traces the influence of landscape upon the mind of man. His last books were: Portfolio Papers (1889) and French and English (1889). In 1891 he removed to the neighbourhood of Paris, and died suddenly on the 4th of November 1894, occupied to the last with his labours on The Portfolio and other writings on art.
In 1896 was published Philip Gilbert Hamerton: an Auto-

biography

BIOGRAPHY (from the Gr. (3ios, life, and yp&4 , writing)

, 18341858; and a Memoir by his Wife, 18581894.

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