Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography/Wornum, Ralph Nicholson
* WORNUM, Ralph Nicholson, was born December 29, 1812, at Thornton, near Norham, Durham. Intending to practise painting as a profession, he, on the completion of his general education at University college in 1833, and after a few months' preparatory training in Sass's art school, proceeded to the continent, and spent six years in the schools and galleries of Munich, Dresden, Rome, and Paris. On his return to England at the end of 1839 he established himself as a portrait painter, but gradually turned from the practice to the literature of art. From 1840 to the completion of the work, Mr. Wornum wrote the greater part of the biographies of artists, and many of the articles on art, in the Penny Cyclopedia and its Supplement. In 1841 he contributed the article "Pictura" to Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities. His "Epochs of Painting" appeared in two volumes of Knight's Monthly Volume, 1847; an enlarged edition in 1859. In 1845 he was authorized by the government to prepare the catalogue of the National gallery, in which, besides an account of every painting, he gave a careful biography of each painter. To the thirty-seventh edition, published in 1863, he added facsimiles of the monograms and signatures on the several pictures. Mr. Wornum was appointed in 1848 lecturer on the history and principles of art to the government schools of design, and in 1852 librarian. In this capacity he prepared a classified catalogue of the library in 1855; and in 1856 published the substance of his lectures under the title of the "Analysis of Ornament," a work of great research and value. In 1855 Mr. Wornum was appointed keeper and secretary to the National gallery, and to his judgment and energy may be ascribed many of the improvements which have since been made in the building, the general disposition of the pictures, the arrangement of the Turner bequest, &c. Besides the works already mentioned, Mr. Wornum wrote the memoir and illustrative text to "The Turner Gallery," folio, 1861; has contributed numerous papers on art to the Art-Journal and other serials; edited the Lectures of the Royal Academicians, for Bohn's Scientific Library, 1848; a new edition of Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting, 1849; and a Biographical Catalogue of Italian Painters, 1855. He is also the author of the biographies of artists, signed R. N. W., in the present work—notices characterized, like all his writings, by fullness and precision of information.—J. T—e.