He was born at Edinburgh on 25 March 1847, and educated at Windermere and at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge,[3] where he took no honours, but graduated B.A.
His tastes in life were Bohemian, and the family profession did not attract him ; but he was deeply interested in all the fine arts, especially the theory and practice.
[4] In 1873, he went to continue his studies at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Antwerp ; then in Paris under Carolus Duran, and afterwards for several years at Barbizon and Grez-sur-Loing.
His work in landscape painting, exhibited at the Royal Academy and elsewhere, was interesting and competent ; but his incapacity for self-assertion and lack of commercial instinct would probably have hampered his career as an artist, even had his executive powers been greater than they were.
his friends, foremost among them Mr. W. E. Henley, began to urge that he should turn his powers of exposition to practical account.
His books published in his lifetime are : Engraving, a translation from La Gravure of Vicomte H. Delaborde, 1886; The Devils of Notre Dame (text to accompany illustrations by Joseph Pennell), 1894 ; Peter Paul Rubens (reprinted, with additions, from Portfolio monographs), 1898; The Art of Velasquez, 1895; Velasquez (the same text revised and expanded in Williamson's series of 'Great Masters'), 1899.