Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/69

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
Archer
49
Archer-Hind

only during the half-century. He had some difficulty in disentangling himself from the Arthurian legend, but was most successful with costume pictures and portraits of children, such as 'Playing at Queen with a Painter's Wardrobe' (R.A. 1861), 'How the Little Lady Stood to Velasquez' (R.A. 1864), 'Old Maid: Maggie, you're cheatin' (R.A. 1865), 'In the Time of Charles I: Portraits of the Children of W. Walkinshaw, Esq.' (R.A. 1867), 'Against Cromwell' (R.A. 1869), 'Colonel Sykes, M.P,' (R.A. 1871). A long series of portraits included several painted during prolonged visits between 1884 and 1887 both to the United States (Mr. James G. Elaine and Mr. Andrew Carnegie) and to India (Lady Dufferin and Lord Clandeboye, Lord Dalhousie, and a posthumous portrait of Sir Charles Macgregor). Among his chief sitters at home were Sir George Trevelyan (R.A. 1872), Professor Blackie, three times (the portrait of 1873 hangs in the library of the Scottish Academy), Sir Henry Irving in 'The Bells' (R.A. 1872), Dr. Ellicott (R.A. 1883), and Sir Edwin Arnold (R.A. 1890). In 1877 he painted for and presented to the Scottish Academy a portrait of Sir Daniel Macnee. Archer continued to the end of his life to produce large canvases, such as 'King Henry II and Fair Rosamund,' 'The Worship of Dionysus,' 'Peter the Hermit,' 'St. Agnes of the Early Christian Martyrs,' and ' In the Second Century "You a Christian?" '. He also painted a few landscapes. For the first number of 'Good Words' (1860) he did six drawings illustrating the serial story 'Lady Somerville's Maidens,' and he contributed two illustrations to 'Household Song' (1861).

During his last years he lived at Shian, Haslemere, where he died on 3 Sept. 1904; he was buried at Haslemere. Archer married, in 1853, Jane Clark, daughter of James Lawson, W.S., Edinburgh; a son and three daughters survived him.

Archer's work was always refined, and reflected his interest in literature and a certain sympathy with the Pre-Raphaelites; a lack of force may be attributed to what his friend Professor Blackie described as 'his thoughtful, evangelico-artistic mildness' (Letters of John Stuart Blackie to his Wife). Unluckily for his reputation he continued to work after his powers failed. He was at the time of his death the oldest member of the Royal Scottish Academy, and had been for ten years on its retired list.

A portrait painted by himself at an early age is in the possession of the widow of Henry Gregory Smith, Edinburgh.

[Private information; The Times, 6 Sept. 1904; Scotsman, 8 Sept. 1904; Graves's Royal Academy Exhibitors, 1905; Cat. Royal Scot. Academy.]

D. S. M.

ARCHER-HIND, formerly Hodgson, RICHARD DACRE (1849–1910), Greek scholar and Platonist, born at Morris Hall, near Norham, on 18 Sept. 1849, came of an ancient Northumbrian family, being third and youngest son of Thomas Hodgson (b. 1814), who, on the death of a brother in 1869, succeeded to the estates of Stelling and Ovington and assumed the surname of Archer-Hind. The father, a learned horticulturist, graduated B.A. from Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1837 and M.A. in 1840. His wife was his first cousin, Mary Ann, second daughter of John Thomas Huntley, vicar of Kimbolton. Richard Dacre had from his father his early teaching in Latin and Greek, and even when he was at Shrewsbury school, whither he proceeded in 1862, and where he was the pupil of Dr. B. H. Kennedy and Dr. H. W. Moss, his father continued to assist his studies. In 1868 he won an open minor scholarship at Trinity College, Cambridge, and in the following October he went into residence at the university, living with his parents, who now established themselves at Cambridge, as they had formerly established themselves at Shrewsbury, that he might have the comforts of a home life. He was elected to a college foundation scholarship in 1869 and to a Craven University scholarship in 1871. In 1872 he was placed third in the first class of the classical tripos and won the first chancellor's medal for classical learning. He was elected to a fellowship in his college in October 1873 and was appointed assistant lecturer in April 1877 and assistant tutor in December 1878. At Easter 1899 he was made a senior lecturer, and in December 1903 he retired from the staff. During the last two years of his life Archer-Hind was an invalid. He died at Cambridge on 6 April 1910. The body was cremated at Golder's Green, and the ashes were buried at Cambridge. He married on 17 March 1888 Laura, youngest daughter of Lewis Pocock [q. v.] He left one son, Laurence, born in 1895.

Both in Latin and in Greek the exceptional quality of Archer-Hind's scholarship was recognised from the beginning of his Cambridge career. But Greek came to interest him more than Latin. At a later time, while his love of Pindar,