English literary and art critic, born at Norwood, London, on the 18th of June 1845. A scholar of Trinity College, Cambridge, he became a fellow of his college in 1868. In 1873 he was Slade professor of fine art, and was appointed in the next year to the directorship of the Fitzwilliam Museum. In 1884 he removed to London on his appointment as keeper of prints and drawings in the British Museum. His chief publications are lives of Landor (1881) and Keats (1887), in the English Men of Letters series; the Edinburgh edition of R. L. Stevenson’s works (1894–1897); editions of the letters of Keats (1887), and of the Vailima Letters (1899), which R. L. Stevenson chiefly addressed to him; A Florentine Picture-Chronicle (1898), and Early History of Engraving in England (1905). But in the field both of art and of literature, Mr. Colvin’s fine taste, wide knowledge and high ideals made his authority and influence extend far beyond his published work. He was knighted in 1911, and retired from his position in the British Museum in 1912. In 1911 he published an edition of the Letters of R. L. Stevenson and in 1917 John Keats, His Life and Poetry. His autobiographical Memoirs and Places appeared in November 1921. (See authored articles: Alessio Baldovinetti, Bellini, Sandro Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Albrecht Dürer, Maso Finiguerra, John Flaxman, Giorgione, Giotto, Michaelangelo, Marcantonio Raimondi.)
