Charles Holmes

For other people named Charles Holmes, see Charles Holmes (disambiguation).

Caricature of Sir Charles Holmes by Powys Evans.

Sir Charles John Holmes, KCVO (1868, Preston, Lancashire – 1936, Kensington, London) was a British painter, art critic and museum director.^[1] His writing on art combined theory with practice and he was an expert on the painting techniques of the Old Masters, from whose example he had learned to draw and paint.

Holmes was the son of a clergyman, Charles Rivington Holmes,^[2] and Mary Susan Dickson.^[1] He attended Eton College from 1883 and attained a scholarship to Brasenose College, Oxford in 1887.

From 1889 to 1903, Holmes worked as a publisher's and printer's assistant in London, and his experience in the field of publishing contributed to the early success of The Burlington Magazine (founded 1903), which he co-edited with Robert Dell until 1909. From 1904 to 1910, he was Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford University. His stature as a landscape painter was acknowledged when he was admitted into the New English Art Club in 1904, on the same day as John Singer Sargent. He held one-man shows at the Carfax Gallery, Piccadilly, in 1909, 1911 and 1919. In the latter show he showed examples of his 'Industrial Landscapes'.

Upon the retirement of Lionel Cust, Holmes was appointed the director of the National Portrait Gallery in 1909. In 1916 he was elected director of the National Gallery, although a change in the constitution of the Gallery meant that Holmes was not given the absolute authority in the choice of purchases that his predecessors had enjoyed.

Bridge near Gargrave, watercolour by Sir Charles Holmes, 1934

Holmes instead made it his priority to familiarise the general public with the contents of the Gallery, using his experience as a critic and in publishing to this end. He received a knighthood in 1921, the year of his retirement from the National Gallery.

References

1. ^ ^{a b} Holmes, Charles John, Sir, Dictionary of Art Historians.
2. ^ "HOLMES, Sir RICHARD RIVINGTON". Dictionary of national biography, Second Supplement: 288–289. 1912. http://books.google.com/books?id=p8ocAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA288.  C. R. Holmes was an elder brother of Sir R. R. Holmes.

External links

• Works written by or about Charles John Holmes at Wikisource
• Paintings by Holmes in the Tate Collection

Persondata
Name	Holmes, Charles
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Date of birth	1868
Place of birth
Date of death	1936
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