Background
Robert Bateman was born in 1842. He was the third son of James Bateman, the accomplished horticulturist and landowner, who built Biddulph Grange and its gardens, in Staffordshire.
Along with his elder brothers John and Rowland, Robert was educated at Brighton College during 1855 - 1860.
From 1863 to 1867, he was a student at the Royal Academy schools.
Robert Bateman was born in 1842. He was the third son of James Bateman, the accomplished horticulturist and landowner, who built Biddulph Grange and its gardens, in Staffordshire.
Along with his elder brothers John and Rowland, Robert was educated at Brighton College during 1855 - 1860. From 1863 to 1867, he was a student at the Royal Academy schools.
Robert Bateman devoted his career fully to painting. His key works are “The Dead Knight” (1870), also known as “The Three Ravens”, which was the title used when it was displayed in 1868, “The Pool of Bethesda” (1877, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1878), “The Raising of Samuel” (exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1880), and “The Lily or the Rose” (exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1882).
“The Pool of Bethesda” is at the Yale Centre of British Art. “The Dead Knight” is in a private collection, but there is a fine large color reproduction in the book “The Last Romantics” (1989). “The Lily or the Rose” he presented to his old school, Brighton College, where it hung for many years on the main building staircase until destroyed around 1960 after Brighton Royal Pavilion Museum and Art Gallery refused to accept it as a gift.
Walter Crane, in his “An Artist's Reminiscences” (1907), described Bateman's painting as of ... "a magic world of romance and pictured poetry, a twilight world of dark mysterious woodlands, haunted streams, meads of deep green starred with burning flowers, veiled in a dim and mystic light." As well as paintings, Bateman designed religious woodcuts, his work appearing in The Latin Year, The Church Service and A Century of Bibles.
Robert practised as an architect, most notably building Collyers, a house near Petersfield. He was also noted as a naturalist (corresponding with Charles Darwin), a botanical illustrator, sculptor, book illustrator, and an Italian scholar. He also left a horticultural legacy, in his planting of the gardens at Benthall Hall from 1890 – 1906 — much of his garden design there is still extant and is now maintained by the National Trust as part of Benthall Hall.
Robert became a wealthy owner of property and land. His fortune led him to become a noted philanthropist of the time. He and his wife Caroline lived near Much Wenlock, Shropshire, at the 16th-Century Benthall Hall; now a National Trust property. The artist died in 1922.
Robert Bateman adhered to the artistic traditions of Romanticism.
From about 1870 he was the leader of a group of artists inspired by the art of Edward Burne-Jones. He was a founder of the Society of Painters in Tempera in 1901.
Robert married Caroline, the daughter of the Dean of Lichfield, in 1883.