John Roddam Spencer Stanhope
John Roddam Spencer Stanhope was an English artist who lived from 1829 to 1908. Stanhope is associated with the second wave of Pre-Raphaelite artists. His work also falls under the umbrella of Symbolism and Aestheticism.
Stanhope was born in Yorkshire, England, to a well-educated and middle to upper class family. His father studied Greek antiquarianism and his mother studied painting under the great Thomas Gainsborough, himself. Stanhope started taking art classes at Oxford, where he became a student of George Frederic Watts. With Watts, Stanhope traveled to both Italy and Asia Minor for about a year, learning art and architecture.
When Stanhope returned to England, he was asked by the artist, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, to participate in the Oxford murals project. For this project, artists painted murals all over the inside of the Oxford Union library building. Most of the contributing artists were Pre-Raphaelite painters. Stanhope contributed with his painting, “Sir Gawaine and the Damsels”. After getting married, Stanhope commissioned a new studio to be built, and asked artists such as Edward Burne-Jones to paint parts of it. Though Stanhope had a high social standing, his art was not considered mainstream, so he often exhibited his works at the Grosvenor Gallery rather than the Royal Academy of Art.
Stanhope is considered to be part of the second generation of Pre-Raphaelite artists, as he was artistically active about 20 years after the movement began and was a founding member of the Hogarth Club. The Hogarth Club, named after artist William Hogarth, was an association of Pre-Raphaelite artists that formed after the original Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood had ended. John Roddam Spencer Stanhope was the uncle of the Pre-Raphaelite artist, Evelyn de Morgan. He taught her how to paint, even though her parents did not readily approve of her career choice.
Stanhope’s asthma forced him to spend the winters in Florence in a milder climate. In 1880, he moved and lived in Florence full time until his death in 1908 at age 79.
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