John Charles Robinson

Born 16 December 1824
Died 10 April 1913

Active: 1847 - 1901

Country of birth and death: England

Museum curator, art school director

Bron in Nottingham. Originally intending to train as an architect, he turned instead to painting, and studied in the studio of Michel-Martin Drolling in Paris. Returning to England in 1847, he taught at the School of Design in Hanley, Staffordshire.

In 1852, he went to London to work as a teachers' training master, but was soon appointed curator of the Museum of Ornamental Art at Marlborough House. In 1857 the collection moved to the newly established South Kensington (later Victoria and Albert) Museum, where Robinson worked until 1867, his post changing in 1863 to that of art referee. He built up the museum's collection of Italian Renaissance sculpture, acquiring many pieces from the Gigli and Campana collections in Rome. Robinson's catalogue Italian Sculpture of the Middle Ages and Period of the Revival of Art (1862) was a landmark in the scholarly study of the subject.

In 1856 Robinson organized a collectors' club, to hold evening receptions, conversazioni, and exhibitions; in 1857 this became the Fine Arts Club, which later merged gradually with the Burlington Fine Arts Club, formed in 1866, with Robinson as first president. The club fulfilled an important function at a time when loan exhibitions were rare. With his friend Sir Francis Seymour Haden, Robinson also founded the Royal Society of Painter Etchers; a collection of etchings by Robinson is preserved in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. From 1882 to 1901 he was surveyor of the queen's pictures. He died at his country home, Newton Manor, Swanage, Dorset.

Citing this record

'John Charles Robinson', Mapping the Practice and Profession of Sculpture in Britain and Ireland 1851-1951, University of Glasgow History of Art and HATII, online database 2011 [http://sculpture.gla.ac.uk/view/person.php?id=msib4_1221650671, accessed 23 Mar 2023]