Sidney Colvin
Sidney Colvin (18 June 1845 – 11 May 1927) was an English curator and literary and art critic, part of the illustrious Anglo-Indian Colvin family. He is primarily remembered for his friendship with Robert Louis Stevenson.
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[edit] Biography
He was born on 18 June 1845 in West Norwood, London, at St. John's Lodge on Knight's Hill, a nine bedroom, twenty-one acre estate, to Bazett David Colvin, an East India merchant, and Mary Steuart, daughter of William Butterworth Bayley. Both sides of his family were connected to British India, his father as a partner in the trading company of Crawford, Colvin, and Co., with offices in Calcutta and London. His uncle John Russell Colvin, lieutenant-governor of the North-West Provinces during the mutiny of 1857, gave him ten cousins, including the lawyer Walter Mytton and Auckland, also lieutenant-governor of the North-West Provinces (and Oudh).
Colvin's childhood was spent at The Grove, Little Bealings, Suffolk,[1] as Bazett David inherited the estate in 1847 from his father James. The house and estate had literary and artistic connections: James had purchased it in 1824 from Perry Nursey,[2] the landscape painter and teacher of Thomas Churchyard; Nursey had often entertained David Wilkie RA at Little Bealings, and was friends with Edward Fitzgerald, translator of The Rubayat of Omar Khayyam.[3]
A scholar of Trinity College, Cambridge, Colvin became a fellow of his college in 1868.[4] In 1873 he was Slade professor of fine art, and was appointed in the next year to the directorship of the Fitzwilliam Museum.
In late summer 1873, Colvin became friends with Robert Louis Stevenson, then a young and unpublished man. Colvin was already acquainted with Fanny (Frances Jane) Sitwell, a woman of thirty four, with a young son, separated from her husband. Both men were attracted to her, and although Stevenson wrote to her for years, Colvin eventually married her in 1901.[5] Colvin became Stevenson's literary adviser, and after his death was the first editor of his letters. Soon after their first meeting he had placed Stevenson's first paid contribution, an essay, "Roads", in The Portfolio.[6] Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes was dedicated to him.
In 1884 he moved to London on his appointment as keeper of prints and drawings in the British Museum. His chief publications are lives of Walter Savage Landor (1881) and Keats (1887), in the English Men of Letters series; the Edinburgh edition of Stevenson's works (1894–1897); editions of the letters of Keats (1887), and of the Vailima Letters (1899), which Stevenson chiefly addressed to him; A Florentine Picture-Chronicle (1898), an edition of Stevenson's collected Letters (2 volumes, London, 1900), and Early History of Engraving in England (1905).
Colvin's publications made him an authority on Stevenson's life and work. In addition to the publications listed, he also wrote the sketch of Stevenson for the Dictionary of National Biography (vol. liv.). He was to have written an authoritative Life of Stevenson, intended for publication simultaneously with the Letters, but was obliged to relinquish the task to Graham Balfour.[7]
In the field both of art and of literature, Colvin's fine taste, wide knowledge and high ideals made his authority and influence extend far beyond his published work.
Colvin was knighted in 1911. The citation reads[8]
- Sidney Colvin, Esq., D.Litt
- Keeper of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum since 1884 and member of many learned bodies. Slade Professor of Fine Art at Cambridge from 1873 to 1895, author of several publications on literature and the fine arts and contributor to the "Encyclopædia Britannica" and "Dictionary of National Biography" &c. Born in 1845.
His wife predeceased him in August 1924. The couple were the subject of a 1928 biography by E. V. Lucas.
[edit] Sources
[edit] References
- ^ The Times obituary on Wikisource.
- ^ Little Bealings Village history
- ^ ONDB biography of Perry Nursey
- ^ Venn, J.; Venn, J. A., eds (1922–1958). "Colvin, Sidney". Alumni Cantabrigienses (10 vols) (online ed.). Cambridge University Press.
- ^ Furnas (1952); Mehew (2004).
- ^ Furnas (1952), 84-5.
- ^
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: "Colvin, Sidney". New International Encyclopedia. 1905. - ^ "New Year's Honours". The Times (London): p. 10; col B. January 02, 1911; Issue 39471. "Knights. His Majesty has been further pleased to confer the honour of Knighthood upon:"
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the [edit] Further reading
- J. C. Furnas, Voyage to Windward: The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson, London: Faber and Faber, 1952
- Ernest Mehew, "Robert Louis Stevenson", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford: OUP, 2004. Retrieved on 29 September 2008
- Chisholm, Hugh, ed (1911). "Colvin, Sidney". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
[edit] External links
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Wikisource has original works written by or about: Sidney Colvin |
- Archival material relating to Sidney Colvin listed at the UK National Register of Archives
- Works by or about Sidney Colvin in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
