Charles Holmes

Sir Charles John Holmes, KCVO ( born November 11, 1868 in Preston, Lancashire, † December 7, 1936 in London ) was an English art historian, curator and artists.

Youth and early professional years

Son of the pastor Charles Rivington Holmes, Sir Richard Rivington Holmes nephew, the librarian of the Royal Library of Windsor Castle. Educated at St. Edmund 's School, Canterbury, 1883 at Eton College. In 1887 Holmes studied on a scholarship at Brasenose College, Oxford. From 1889 he worked in various London Publishing Printers, first with his cousin Francis Rivington, then at the Ballantyne Press, finally at John Cumming Nimmo. 1896-1903 he was Manager of the Vale Press for Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon. In addition, Holmes wrote with Roger Fry an art column in the magazine Athenaeum. In 1903 he married his cousin, the musician Florence Rivington.

Academic career

Holmes was 1904-10 Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford University and 1904-09, from time to time along with Robert Dell, editor of the Burlington Magazine, founded in 1903. 1909 appointment as director of the National Portrait Gallery in London, in which he was particularly interested in, to create a collection of photographic portraits. In 1916 he resigned this position to become director of the National Gallery in London until 1928. Here he gained merits in the development of the collection for a lay audience; Moreover, he had to create a series of inventory catalogs.

As an artist

Holmes was as a self-taught painter and draftsman. Based on the detailed study of the techniques of the old masters, he developed a highly individual style, whereby he leaned on European and East Asian art ( he studied at an early stage with the art of Hiroshige and Hokusai ). Later he came under the influence of Ricketts and learned the etching by William Strang.

Holmes was known for landscapes and painted with preference barren mountain scenery as Red Ruin, Lucerne (1907, London, Tate Britain ). He often found his motives in northern England. His style has remained relatively constant, a simplified realistic style of painting, in which he often emphasizes a geometrisierendes pattern that he faced a more naturalistic treatment of the sky. Holmes was also one of few artists who have the representation of industrially -dominated landscapes devoted themselves. So he painted a series of views from the industrial areas of Blackburn and Preston Samlesbury Hall for (1928 at Colnaghi 's, London, issued ).

He introduced since 1900 regularly with the New English Art Club of which they are members in 1904 or 1905; In 1924 he was also Associate ( Associate Member ), 1929 and 1935 Member Vice-President of the Royal Society of Painters in Watercolours. Between 1912 and 1930 he also made ​​six times at the Venice Biennale. The Fine Art Society held in London in 1937 a commemorative exhibition from.

Honors

1921 Holmes was awarded the knighthood in 1928, he was appointed Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order. He also received honorary doctorates from the universities of Cambridge and Leeds, and in 1931 an Honorary Fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford.

Writings (selection )

• Hokusai, 1899
• Constable and His Influence on Landscape Painting, 1902
• Notes on the Science of Picture- Making, 1909
• Notes on the Post-Impressionist Painters, Grafton Galleries, 1910-11, 1910
• Notes on the Art of Rembrandt, 1911
• Leonardo da Vinci, 1919
• The Making of the National Gallery, 1824-1924. An historical sketch, 1924 ( with CH Collins Baker)
• A Grammar of the Arts, 1931
• Self and Partners ( Mostly Self ), 1936 ( autobiography )