HERCULES BRABAZON BRABAZON, NEAC, PS
(British, 1821-1906)

The younger son of an aristocratic Anglo-Irish family, Hercules Brabazon Sharpe was born in Paris in 1821. His family returned to England in 1832 and settled in East Sussex and he received a traditional upper class education before going up to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1840 to read mathematics.  Following graduation he flouted his father's wishes to train as a barrister and chose instead to study art and music in Rome on a much-reduced personal allowance.

Everything changed in 1847 with the sudden death of his older brother when he unexpectedly found himself the heir to the Brabazon estates in Ireland (he was required to change his surname under the will of his uncle, Sir William Brabazon, Bart). Overnight he found himself a wealthy man and he would inherit further estates in Sussex and Durham following the death of his father in 1858. For the next 50 years Brabazon devoted himself to his art, painting whenever he chose, giving his work away to friends, never thinking of selling them, and hating the idea of exhibiting.

He left Rome to return to England in 1848, travelling across Spain on horseback and it was on this journey that he first encountered the work of Velázquez who, with JMW Turner, were to remain his enduring artistic inspirations. He travelled widely for the rest of his life, painting constantly: he particularly loved Venice and often visited and painted there, sometimes in the company of John Singer Sargent, the most successful portrait painter of his era as well as a gifted landscape artist.

Brabazon first started painting his characteristic atmospheric and impressionistic watercolours and pastels in the 1860s and although at first he appeared to be 'just a gentleman amateur' his unique talent was soon recognised by John Ruskin so much so that, in 1867, he was elected a member of the Burlington Fine Arts Club at the same time as Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Ruskin himself. However it would take another 24 years before John Singer Sargent finally succeeded in persuading him to exhibit his work publicly, showing two paintings at the New English Art Club (NEAC) Winter Exhibition of 1891 and a further two paintings in the Spring Exhibition of 1892.

On the strength of this Brabazon was invited to hold his first one-man exhibition at the Goupil Gallery in Bond Street, London, a few months later (1892). It was a great critical and commercial success, indeed a 'sell-out', which was especially championed by such younger artists as Sargent and Philip Wilson Steer, as well as by DS MacColl, the Keeper of the Tate Gallery, who greatly admired Brabazon's work.  In a now famous quotation, Sir Frederick Wedmore, one of the most influential art critics of his day, said that Brabazon was "a country gentleman, who at seventy years old made his debut as a professional artist, and straightaway became famous".

Success made not the slightest difference to him and he continued to describe himself modestly as an "enthusiastic amateur", painting entirely for his own pleasure and living "for art and sunshine". In a 1913 review of his artistic legacy, however, Haldane Macfall, arguably the most famous art historian of his day, astutely observed that, "Criticism...has found Brabazon to be the ‘perfect amateur’, Turner the 'perfect professional'...there is no such thing as a professional or amateur in art. A man is an artist or he is not…(and) no man could have been less amateur than Brabazon...".

He held four further one-man exhibitions in London and became a founder member of the Pastel Society (PS) in 1898, with John McLure Hamilton describing him as "that clever artist who knew how to breathe on to paper in puffs of coloured smoke the most charming skies and lakes, and mountains and Venetian palaces". He died at the height of his success in 1906.

He was a gregarious and much-loved man with a great gift for friendship. His social circle included many leading figures of the day in the worlds of art and music, including Franz Liszt, the composer, with whom he would play the piano. Brabazon never married and bequeathed his estates and art to members of his family.  They decided to sell his artistic legacy and, in studio sales at Christie's (1926 and 1927) and Sotheby’s (1928), the vast quantity of 3,199 works was sold.  This was a striking endorsement of his reputation and appeal but a decision that was to depress the value of his work for decades to come and from which they have only begun to recover in recent years.

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With best wishes

CHRIS NOEL-JOHNSON
ALBANY FINE ART
T: +44 (0) 1367 870961
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E: chrisnj@albanyfineart.co.uk