Hercules Brabazon Brabazon

1821 - 1906

Brabazon Brabazon was born in Paris to English parents as Hercules Brabazon Sharpe. After earning a degree in mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge, he moved to Rome to study art and music. This went against his father's determination that he should pursue law and forced him to live on the edge of poverty until the death of an elder brother in 1847. He then inherited the Irish estate of a wealthy uncle, whose will stipulated that he change his last name to Brabazon. From then on, he led a life of travel, art study and painting, initially practised as a non-exhibiting amateur, until John Singer Sargent in 1892 persuaded him to exhibit some drawings at the Goupil Gallery. Because he was a wealthy amateur, in some ways the archetype of the talented amateur watercolourist, Brabazon's artistic excellence has been often overlooked, although not by collectors and enthusiasts, who recognise both the modernity of his style and his ability to emerge with individuality out of the shadows of heroes his, such as Sargent and J. M. W. Turner.