British art critic and writer, born in Roxburghshire on the 7th of February 1850. He was educated at Harrow and Exeter College, Oxford. On leaving the university he became well known as a writer on art, and his judgment of pictures was considered of great value. From 1880 to 1892 he was art critic to various newspapers, among them being the Pall Mall Gazette, St. James’s Gazette and Manchester Guardian. In 1892 he became director of the National Gallery of Ireland, a post which he held for more than twenty years. He was knighted in 1899. Sir Walter Armstrong was more especially an authority on the Dutch 17th-century and English 18th-century periods. He was the author of many works on art, of which the chief are the following: Gainsborough and his Place in English Art (189S); Sir Joshua Reynolds (1900); J. M. W. Turner (1001); Sir Henry Raeburn (1901) and Art in the British Isles (1909); besides Lives of Alfred Stevens, Peter de Wint, Gainsborough and Velázquez. He was also co-editor of Bryan’s Dictionary of Painters. He died in London on the 8th of August 1918. (See authored article: Sir William Quiller Orchardson.)
