He was born in Tottenham Court Road on 7 May 1798; his father and grandfather, both Robert Graves, were printsellers in London. He became in 1812 a pupil of John Romney, the line engraver, and at the same time studied in the life school in Ship Yard, Temple Bar. He executed in pen and ink facsimiles of rare prints on commissions from collectors. Before long he decided to concentrate on engraving.
In 1836 Graves was elected an associate engraver of the Royal Academy, in succession to James Fittler. He presented as his diploma work a portrait of Lord Byron, after Thomas Phillips.
Graves died of paralysis at 20 Grove Terrace, Highgate Road, London, on 28 February 1873, and was buried in Highgate cemetery.
Works
Among Graves's earliest works were some of the plates in James Caulfield's Portraits, Memoirs, and Characters of Remarkable Persons from the Revolution in 1688 to the end of the Reign of George II, London, 1819–20. These were followed by portraits and vignettes for J. F. Dove's English Classics and other works. His first exhibited work, a medallion portrait of Sir Mark Masterman Sykes, after Peter Rouw, appeared in 1824 in the first exhibition of the Society of British Artists, where other small plates by him appeared until 1830. He engraved some of the portraits of the deans of Westminster for John Preston Neale's History and Antiquities of the Abbey Church of St. Peter, Westminster, 1818–23, and the portraits for Gilbert Burnet's History of the Reformation, 1838 edition.
Between 1831 and 1834 Graves executed the three plates of The Enthusiast and Mathematical Abstraction after Theodore Lane, and The Musical Bore, after Robert William Buss. For the author's edition of the Waverley Novels he engraved plates after David Wilkie, Edwin Landseer, William Mulready, and others. He also worked for the Literary Souvenir, Iris, Amulet, Forget-Me-Not, and Keepsake Français on plates, after Murillo, Wilkie, Sir Thomas Lawrence, Simon Jacques Rochard, and other painters.
After his election A.R.A., works which Graves sent to the exhibitions of the Royal Academy included:
The Abbotsford Family, after David Wilkie, in 1837;
The Examination of Shakespeare before Sir Thomas Lucy on a charge of Deer-stealing, and A Castaway, both after George Harvey, in 1839 and 1841;
The Highland Whiskey Still, after Edwin Landseer, in 1842;
The First Reading of the Bible in the Crypt of Old St. Paul's, after George Harvey, in 1846;
Lord Nelson, after Lemuel Francis Abbott, in 1847;
The Baron's Charger, after John Frederick Herring, and The Highland Cradle, after Edwin Landseer, in 1850;
Cromwell resolving to refuse the Crown, after Charles Lucy, in 1858;
The Slide, after Thomas Webster, in 1861;
The Good Shepherd and The Immaculate Conception, both after Murillo, in 1863 and 1865;
The Hon. Mrs. Graham, after Thomas Gainsborough, in 1866;
The Blue Boy (Master Burrell), after Gainsborough, and Mrs. Lloyd, after Sir Joshua Reynolds, in 1868;
Via Dolorosa, after Raphael (or Cima da Conegliano?), in 1869;
Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, and Mrs. Beaufoy, both after Gainsborough, in 1870 and 1872.
Graves also exhibited plates engraved for the Art Journal, including:
Haidee, a Greek Girl, and The Sisters, after Charles Eastlake;
The Princess Amelia, after Sir Thomas Lawrence;
The Princess Victoria Gouramma of Coorg, after Franz Xaver Winterhalter;
The Princesses Mary, Sophia, and Amelia, daughters of George III, after John Singleton Copley;
The Origin of the Harp, after Daniel Maclise; and
Paolo and Francesca da Rimini, after Joseph Noel Paton.
His last finished plate was a portrait of Charles Dickens, after William Powell Frith, for John Forster's Life of the novelist. He left unfinished a plate after Gainsborough's portrait of Lady Bowater, which was completed by James Stephenson.
Family
Graves's son Frederick Percy Graves was a landscape artist. Another son, Robert Edmund Graves, worked at the British Museum. The printseller Henry Graves was Robert Graves's brother, and Algernon Graves was son of Henry.
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Notable quotes
“The dead may speak the truth only, even when it discredits themselves.”
— The Golden Fleece (1944), Invocation
“The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he is really very good — in spite of all the people who say he is very good.”
— Quoted in The Observer [London] (6 December 1964)
“If I were a girl, I'd despair. The supply of good women far exceeds that of a man who desrves them.”
— Robert Graves Quotes. (n.d.). BrainyQuote.com. Retrieved July 7, 2022.
“Hardly one soldier in a hundred was inspired by religious feeling of even the crudest kind. It would have been difficult to remain religious in the trenches even if one had survived the irreligion of the training battalion at home.”
— Ch. 17
“Shells used to come bursting on my bed at midnight, even though Nancy shared it with me; strangers in daytime would assume the faces of friends who had been killed... I could not use a telephone, I felt sick every time I travelled by train, and to see more than two new people in a single day prevented me from sleeping.”
— Ch.26 On being at home in Harlech in 1919. During the First World War, the mental effects of war on the fighting men were called shell shock or neurasthenia — or dismissed altogether as cowardice. Graves describes very clearly symptoms of what would now be seen as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
“Faults in English prose derive not so much from lack of knowledge, intelligence or art as from lack of thought, patience or goodwill.”
— Ch. 3: "Where Is Good English to Be Found?"
Quotes via Wikiquote (CC BY-SA), each with its original source.
