Richard St John Tyrwhitt

Richard St John Tyrwhitt (1827–1895) was an English cleric and academic, known as a writer on art. Life The eldest son of Robert Philip Tyrwhitt (1798–1886), a police magistrate, and his wife Catherine Wigley, daughter of Henry St. John, he was born on 19 March 1827. He matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford, on 15 May 1845, was a student from 1845 to 1859, tutor from 1852 to 1856, and rhetoric reader in 1856. He graduated B.A. in 1849 and M.A. in 1852. In 1851 he was ordained, and from 1858 to 1872 he held the vicarage of St Mary Magdalen's Church, Oxford. In 1857 Tyrwhitt assisted William Morris in painting the roof of the Oxford Union Society. Tyrwhitt was an admirer of John Ruskin, in whose favour he withdrew his candidature for the Slade Professorship of Fine Art in 1869; he was accounted a member of the Guild of St George in 1876. He was a member of the committee for the decoration of St Paul's Cathedral. He died at 62 Banbury Road, Oxford, on 6 November 1895. Views During the contested 1877 election for the Oxford Professorship of Poetry, Tyrwhitt attacked John Addington Symonds, a candidate, in a piece "The Greek Spirit in Modern Literature" in the Contemporary Review. The argument also took in Benjamin Jowett, suspected of unorthodox religious views; Symonds found it telling, and withdrew his candidacy shortly before the election. Tyrwhitt's piece has been characterised as homophobic, and caused the withdrawal of Walter Pater too. Also in the Contemporary Review, he argued in 1878 that belief in evolution was compatible with Christianity, and that John Tyndall was incorrect in thinking otherwise.