G. C. Williamson


George Charles Williamson was a British art historian, antiquarian, and author of numerous books on European art and artists. He sometimes wrote under the pen name Rowley Cleeve.

Biography

G. C. Williamson was born in Guildford in 1858, and was educated at the University of London. He married Louisa Mary Lethbridge in 1883.
He wrote many books on European art and artists, focusing on the period from the Renaissance to the late 19th century. A number of these were issued as volumes in the publisher George Bell & Sons' Miniature Series of Painters, of which he was also the series editor. He wrote some of these under his real name and some under his "Rowley Cleeve" pseudonym.
In the years 1899-1914 he was the series editor of the book series Great Masters in Painting and Sculpture.
He also wrote guides for art collectors on various topics—including several on portrait miniatures—and he assembled catalogues for collectors of art and antiques. For the American banker J. Pierpont Morgan, he put together a four-volume catalogue of Morgan's collection of miniatures; a fifth volume was never completed due to Morgan's death. Williamson also served as an adviser to Morgan on some purchases for his collection.
Williamson occasionally wrote on literary, historical, and cultural topics outside the field of art. Among these are Curious Survivals, a book on English customs, and a book on the voyages of the Elizabethan naval commander George Clifford, 3rd Earl of Cumberland.
Among Williamson' coauthored books is a study of the painter Angelica Kauffmann, one of the founding members of the Royal Academy of Arts. Angelica Kauffmann, R.A.: Her Life and Her Works, written with Lady Victoria Manners, was prompted by the discovery in the RA archives of a manuscript in Kauffmann's handwriting, written in Italian and previously untranslated, which gives an account of Kauffmann's paintings post-1781. Manners and Williamson wrote that this enabled them to "come to certain definite conclusions regarding many pictures hitherto ascribed to other artists." They included numerous reproductions in both colour and black-and-white on the grounds that prior books on Kauffman had presented inadequate reproductions of her paintings.
He died at his home in Guildford in September 1942.
A few of Williamson's papers from the period 1921–1937 are held by Boston College.

Publications

Solo authored

Coauthored

  • George Engleheart, 1750–1829: Miniature Painter to George III
  • How to Identify Portrait Miniatures
  • Cities of Northern Italy: Verona, Padua, Bologna, and Ravenna
  • John Zoffany, R. A.: His Life and Works 1735–1810
  • Angelica Kauffmann, R.A.: Her Life and Her Works
  • The Art of the Miniature Painter
;As Rowley Cleeve