Portrait of Calderon by G. F. Watts.
Click on the image to enlarge it.

“There was great excitement in those days among the young artists, for a change was coming over the school through the influence of Millais, Holman Hunt, and others of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. The love of Nature was ousting the love of conventionalism, and this was shown in the careful delineation of the minutest detail of leaf and flower, rock and stone, and sunlight and sun-shadows. [Calderon's] Broken Vows was not only a subject likely to be popular, since it represented a young lady who accidentally discovers her lover to be faithless, but was painted in the new spirit; and without doubt the heart of the painter was in his work..... Calderon's more decorative works, such as The Olive and The Vine, The Flowers of the Earth, . . . show the painter to the greatest advantage. They fulfil one of the missions of art, which is to be decorative and enjoyable without insisting too much on raising our minds or teachiug us moral lessons, and are entirely devoid of allectation and eccentricity. They are frank, bold, strong, healthy pictures such as Paul Veronese might have delighted in, but without being in the least imitative or inspired by anything but the artist's own feeling and view of nature.... — G. A. Storey

Biographical Material

Works

Bibliography

Dodson, Campbell. "Philip Hermogenes Calderon." Dictionary of National Biography, Vol. I, 1901 supplement.

Fenn, W. W. "Our Living Artists: Philip Hermogenes Calderon R.A. The Magazine of Art (1878): 197-202.

Stephens, Frederic George. "Mr. Philip Hermogenes Calderon, R.A., Keeper." The Athenaeum No. 3680 (May 7, 1898): 605.

Storey, G. A., R.A. “Philip Hermogenes Calderon, A. R. A. (1833-98).” Magazine of Art. 22 (November 1897-October 1898): 446-52. Internet Archive version of a copy in the University of Toronto Library. Web. 28 October 2014. [Complete text in the Victorian Web.]


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Created 28 October 2014

Last modified 11 July 2023