Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Calvert, Charles (1785-1852)
CALVERT, CHARLES (1785–1852), landscape-painter, born at Glossop Hall, Derbyshire, on 23 Sept. 1785, was the eldest son of Charles Calvert, agent of the Duke of Norfolk's estate. He was apprenticed to the cotton trade, and began business as a cotton merchant in Manchester, but against the wishes of his friends he abandoned commerce for art and became a landscape-painter. He was one of those instrumental in the foundation of the Manchester Royal Institution (which has since become the City Art Gallery), and he gained the Heywood gold medal for a landscape in oil, and the Heywood silver medal for a landscape in water colour. Much of his time was necessarily devoted to teaching, but all the moments that could be spared from it were passed in the lake districts. Even in his later years, when confined to his bed by failing health, he occupied himself in recording his reminiscences of natural beauty. He died at Bowness, Westmoreland, on 26 Feb. 1852, and was buried there.
The father of the landscape-painter, Charles Calvert the elder, was an amateur. He was born in 1754; died on 13 June 1797, and is buried in St. Mary's churchyard, Manchester; a younger brother, Raisley Calvert, who died in 1794, was a sculptor, and is well known as the friend and admirer of Wordsworth, to whom he bequeathed 900l. Another son of Charles Calvert the elder, Frederick Baltimore Calvert, is separately noticed. Two other sons, Henry and Michael Pease, were both painters.
[Art Journal, 1852, p. 150 (the same notice appears in the Gent. Mag. June 1852, new ser. xxxvii. 630); Nodal's Art in Lancashire and Cheshire, 1884.]