Identity:

Robert James Gordon was a London genre painter.

Life:

Gordon was active in exhibiting between 1871 and 1894, showing works such as Pet Parrot and Lady Teazle at the Royal Academy, Royal Institute of Oil Painters and Society of British Artists in London, as well as at the Royal Society of Artists in Birmingham, Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts, Royal Scottish Academy, Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool and Manchester City Art Gallery. In 1876 he was elected a member of the Society of British Artists, a Society which was to appoint JW its President in 1886.

Gordon's name was mentioned in an anonymous letter to the Court and Society Review in 1886 as one of those older members of the Society of British Artists not 'directly indebted' to JW who have shown a liberal appreciation of art and have thus brought many improvements to the Suffolk Street exhibitions. The writer, seeking to give Gordon the praise due him, declared rather defensively that as an artist he sought 'to render natural beauty by methods as legitimate and as personal as those of Mr. Whistler' (#11358).

Bibliography:

Wood, Christopher, Dictionary of Victorian Artists, Woodbridge, 1971; Johnson, J., and Anna Gruetzner, Dictionary of British Artists 1880-1940, Woodbridge, 1980.