This page is a work in progress, and will be updated with additional information about Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson.

Relationship to john william waterhouse:

Fellow student at the RA Schools.

Brief Biography:

FORBES-ROBERTON, Sir Johnston (1853-1937)

British actor, considered the most famous Hamlet of his time. Also a talented painter.

DOCUMENTED RELATIONSHIP:

- Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson describes his time with Waterhouse when they were fellow students at the Royal Academy Schools of Art:

Some of the great men were to come of us--Frank Dicksee, Alfred Gilbert, Waterhouse, Thornycroft, Waterton and Swan, all in after years to add R.A. to their laurels. Percy Macquoid, the archaeologist and painter, was also one of us. What an audacious and dictatorial crowd we were, laying down the law--and pretty good law it was too--with all the world before us, and each and all convinced we were to be of the elect!

Source: The Art of George Frederick Munn, edited by Margaret Crosby Munn and Mary R. Cabot, with an Introduction by Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson, Dutton & Company, New York, 1916.

- See also Forbes-Robertson's autobiography: A Player Under Three Reigns, T. Fisher Unwin, 1925.

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