Sir Herbert Draper
Date: 1863-1920

Herbert Draper was until relatively recently an obscure figure in Victorian art, but is now one of the most sought after of artists and widely regarded to be one of the greatest late Victorian painters. As Simon Toll wrote in the introduction to his 2002 monograph on the artist, he 'became one of the most successful exponents of academic romanticism in an era in a state of flux, an opulent Golden Age, which saw the last stance of grand narrative painting. Whilst some dreamt of Avalon and Karnak, Draper and his patrons were beguiled by the call of the siren and the distant laughter of the bacchante.' (Simon Toll, Herbert Draper; A Life Study, Antique Collector's Club, 2003). Draper was born at 35 Wellington Street in 1863, the seventh-born child and only son of a merchant grocer at Covent Garden. At Bruce Castle School in Tottenham he excelled in scientific subjects and his father hoped that he would fulfill a superstition associated with seventh-born children to become a doctor. Fortunately he followed his own dreams and in the early 1880s he enrolled at the St John's Wood Art School and graduated to the Royal Academy Schools, where he excelled. Draper rapidly became one of the most popular and successful painters of mythology in the 1890s and his painting 'The Lament For Icarus' was bought by the Chantrey Bequest in 1898 for what was to become the Tate Gallery. By the turn of the century Draper's art was well-known at the Royal Academy exhibitions and he was very well regarded by his peers.

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