Colvin, SIDNEY

Colvin, SIDNEY, was born at Norwood, Surrey, 18th June 1845. He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, where in 1865 he gained the chancellor's medal for English verse, and graduating in 1867 as third classic, became a fellow of his college in 1869. He was elected Slade professor of Fine Art in the university of Cambridge in 1873, and director of the Fitzwilliam Museum in 1876, appointments which he resigned after succeeding G. W. Reid as keeper of the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum in 1884. His numerous contributions to the periodicals, marked by accurate scholarship and poetic feeling, include a valuable series of papers on 'Albert Durer, his Teachers, his Rivals, and his Scholars' (published in the Portfolio for 1877); and his separate works are: Notes on the Exhibitions of the Royal Academy and Old Water-colour Society (reprinted from the Globe, 1869), A Word for Germany by an English Republican (1870), Children in Italian and English Design (1872), Drawings by Flaxman (1876), and Landor (1881) and Kcats (1886) in the 'English Men of Letters' series. He has also edited Selections from Landor (1884). As R. L. Stevenson's literary executor, he superintended the Edinburgh edition of his works (1894 et seq.), and edited his Samoa Letters (1895) and Letters (2 vols. 1899).