Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Quilter, Harry
QUILTER, HARRY (1851–1907), art critic, was the youngest of three sons of William Quilter (1808–1888), first president of the Institute of Accountants, and a well-known collector of water-colour drawings by British artists. Quilter's grandfather was a Suffolk farmer. His mother, his father's first wife, was Elizabeth Harriet, daughter of Thomas Cuthbert. His eldest brother, William Cuthbert, is noticed below. Born at Lower Norwood on 24 Jan. 1851, Harry was educated privately, and entered Trinity College, Cambridge, at Michaelmas 1870; he graduated B.A. in 1874 and proceeded M.A. in 1877. At Cambridge he played billiards and racquets, and read metaphysics, scraping through the moral sciences tripos of 1873 in the third class. He was intended for a business career, but on leaving the university travelled abroad, and devoted some time to desultory art study in Italy. He had entered himself as a student of the Inner Temple on 3 May 1872, and on returning to England he spent six months in studying for the bar, chiefly with Mr. (now Lord Justice) John Fletcher Moulton; he also attended the Slade school of art at University College and the Middlesex Hospital. He was called to the bar on 18 Nov. 1878. An attack of confluent small-pox injured his health, and the possession of a competence and a restless temperament disabled him from concentrating his energies. From 1876 to 1887 he was busily occupied as an art critic and journalist, writing chiefly for the 'Spectator.' In 1880-1 he was also for a time art critic for 'The Times' in succession to Tom Taylor, and in that capacity roused the anger of J. M. Whistler [q.v. Suppl. II.] by his frank criticism of the artist's Venetian etchings (cf. The Gentle Art of Making Enemies, p. 104). He also angered Whistler by his ’vandalism' in re-decorating Whistler's White House, Chelsea, which he purchased for 2700l. on 18 Sept. 1879 and occupied till 1888 (Pennell, Life of Whistler, i. 258). Whistler's antipathy to critics was concentrated upon Quilter, to whom he always referred as 'Arry' and whom he lashed unsparingly at his death (cf. ibid. i. 267-8; and Quilter's 'Memory and a Criticism' of Whistler in Chambers's Journal, 1903, reprinted in Opinions, pp. 134-151).
Besides writing on art Quilter was a collector and a practising artist. His work was regularly hung at the Institute of Painters in Oil Colours from 1884 to 1893. Between 1879 and 1887 he frequently lectured on art and literature in London and the provinces. In 1885 he studied landscape painting at Van Hove's studio at Bruges, and in 1886 was an unsuccessful candidate for the Slade professorship at Cambridge in succession to (Sir) Sidney Colvin (Gentle Art, pp. 118 et seq.). In January 1888, 'tired of being edited,' he started, without editorial experience, an ambitious periodical, the 'Universal Review,' of which the first number was published on 16 May 1888, and was heralded with a whole page advertisement in 'The Times'; it was elaborately illustrated, and contained articles by leading authorities in England and France (George Meredith contributed in 1889 his 'Jump to Glory Jane '). Its initial success was great, but the scheme failed pecuniarily and was abandoned with the issue for December 1890. He exhibited his paintings at the Dudley Gallery in January 1894, and a collection of his works in oils, sketches in wax, water-colours on vellum, chiefly of Cornish scenes, was shown at the New Dudley Gallery in February 1908. From 1894 to 1896 he conducted boarding schools at Mitcham and Liverpool on a 'rational' system which he had himself formulated, and on which he wrote an article, 'In the Days of her Youth,' in the 'Nineteenth Century' (June 1895). In 1902, after two years' continuous labour, he published 'What's What,' an entertaining miscellany of information (with photograph and reproductions of two of his pictures); of the 1182 pages he wrote about a third, containing 350,000 words. Until the end he occupied himself with periodical writing, travelling, and collecting works of art. He died at 42 Queen's Gate Gardens on 10 July 1907, and was buried at Norwood. Most of his collections were sold at Christie's in April 1906, and fetched over 14,000l. He married in 1890 Mary Constance Hall, who survived him with two sons and four daughters. Quilter's separate publications include: 1. A thin volume of light verse, 'Idle Hours,' by 'Shingawn' (a name taken from a sensational story in the London Journal of the time), 1872. 2. 'Giotto,' 1880; new edit. 1881. 3. 'The Academy: Notice of Pictures exhibited at the R.A. 1872-82,' 1883. 4. 'Sententiæ Artis: First Principles of Art,' 1886. 5. 'Preferences in Art, Life, and Literature,' 1892. 6. 'Opinions on Men, Women and Things,' 1909 (a collection of periodical essays made by his widow). He edited an edition of Meredith's 'Jump to Glory Jane' (1892), and illustrated one of Browning's 'Pied Piper of Hamelin' (1898).
[Quilter's Opinions, 1909; Who's Who, 1906; The Times, 13 July 1907; Morning Post, 12 July 1907; Mrs. C. W. Earle, Memoirs and Memories, 1911, pp. 291-8; information kindly supplied by Mrs. Harry Quilter (now Mrs. MacNalty) and his sister, Mrs. S. E. Muter.]