Hamerton, PHILIP GILBERT

Hamerton, PHILIP GILBERT, was born, the son of a solicitor, at Laneside near Oldham, on 10th September 1834. According to the autobiography contained in the Life published by his widow in 1896, his youth was quite exceptionally unhappy. He commenced writing on art for magazines and reviews, and soon produced a volume of poems on The Isles of Loch Awe (1855), and A Painter's Camp in the Highlands, and Thoughts about Art (1862). In 1868 he published Etching and Etchers and Contemporary French Painters; a continuation of the latter appeared in the following year, Painting in France after the Decline of Classicism. From 1869 he edited the Portfolio. The Intellectual Life (1873) is in the form of letters of advice, illustrated by many examples, addressed to literary aspirants and others, of every class and in all circumstances; Human Intercourse (1884) is a volume of essays on social subjects, many of them dealing with intercourse as affected by nationality; The Graphic Arts (1882), finely illustrated, is 'a treatise on the varieties of drawing, painting, and engraving, in comparison with each other and with nature,' the analyses of the technique of the masters of the various arts being remarkable for discrimination and acumen; Landscape (1885), a superbly-illustrated volume, is not so much a treatise on landscape-painting as a work illustrating the influence of natural landscape on man. Other works are Portfolio Papers (1889), French and English (1889), Man in Art (1893), a couple of novels, and his Life of Turner (1879); and to this Encyclopædia he contributed the articles PAINTING, REMBRANDT, and TURNER. He lived many years in France, and died at Boulogne-sur-Seine, 6th November 1894.