Topic: Robert Polhill

Robert Polhill Bevan (5 August 1865 – 8 July 1925) was an English painter, draughtsman and lithographer. He was a founding member of the Camden Town Group, the London Group, and the Cumberland Market Group.

He was born in Brunswick Square, Hove, near Brighton, the fourth of six children of Richard Alexander Bevan and Laura Maria Polhill. The Bevans had been a Quaker family with long associations with Barclays Bank. They were descended from Silvanus Bevan the Plough Court apothecary and Robert Barclay the Quaker Apologist. The family, who could trace direct descent from Iestyn ap Gwrgant, had left Wales in the 17th century and settled in London.

His first teacher of drawing was Arthur Ernest Pearce, who later became head designer to Royal Doulton potteries. In 1888 he studied art under Fred Brown at the Westminster School of Art before moving to the Académie Julian in Paris. Amongst his fellow students were Paul Sérusier, Pierre Bonnard, Edouard Vuillard and Maurice Denis. Bevan made his first visit to Brittany with a fellow student Eric Forbes-Robertson in 1890 and stayed at the Villa Julia, in Pont-Aven. He made a second visit in the autumn of the following year before travelling to Morocco by way of Madrid to study Velasquez and Goya at first hand. He appears to have done more fox-hunting in Tangier than drawing in the company of the artists Joseph Crawhall and George Denholm Armour and was Master of the Tangier Hunt in his second season.