Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Waterlow, Ernest Albert
WATERLOW, Sir ERNEST ALBERT (1850–1919), painter, born in London 24 May 1850, was the only son of Albert Crakell Waterlow, lithographer, of London, by his wife, Maria, daughter of James Corss. Sir Sydney Hedley Waterlow [q.v.], lord-mayor of London in 1872–1873, was his uncle. After education at Eltham collegiate school and Heidelberg, Ernest Waterlow began his art studies at Ouchy, near Lausanne, and subsequently (1867) continued them at the school of art in London kept by Francis Stephen Cary [q.v.]. In 1872 he entered the Royal Academy Schools, where, in the next year, he gained the Turner gold medal for landscape-painting with his picture ‘A Land Storm’. A constant exhibitor at Burlington House from 1872 onwards, Waterlow was also a frequent contributor to the exhibitions of the Royal Society of Painters in Water Colours, of which he was elected associate in 1880, member in 1894, and president in 1897, holding that office until 1914. He was also a member of the ‘Society of Six’, an association of landscape painters, which in 1896 held its first exhibition at the Old Dudley Gallery. He was elected A.R.A. in 1890 and R.A. in 1903; his diploma piece, painted in the latter year, was called ‘The Banks of the Loing’. In 1887 his picture ‘Galway Gossips’ was purchased by the trustees of the Chantrey fund, and now hangs in the National Gallery of British Art at Millbank (Tate Gallery). He was knighted in 1902.
The bulk of Waterlow's production, whether in oil or water-colour, consists of landscapes, with or without figures; he displays in them the characteristics of an essentially facile art, of considerable popular appeal, but without aesthetic qualities of a more profound or lasting interest.
Waterlow was twice married: first, in 1876 to Mary Margaret Sophia (died 1899), daughter of Professor Carl Hofmann, of Heidelberg; secondly, in 1909 to Eleanor Marion, widow of Dr. George Sealy, of Weybridge. By his first wife he had two sons and two daughters. He died at Hampstead 25 October 1919.
[C. H. Collins Baker in the Art Journal, Christmas number 1907. Portrait, Royal Academy Pictures, 1916.]