Swimming with Byron a talk by Dr John Wilson on Thursday 3 October at 5 p.m.

Swimming with Byron: the British Consul General Belgrave Hoppner and his Venetian friendship with Lord Byron, a talk by Dr John Wilson on Thursday 3 October at 5 p.m.

In November 1816 the twenty-eight-year-old Lord Byron arrived in Venice with his friend John Cam Hobhouse, in exile from his notoriety in England. After almost a year of study, touring, writing, theater-going, and womanizing he finally met the local English consul, the young diplomat Richard Belgrave Hoppner, son of the celebrated British portrait painter, and a personal friendship developed quickly.
Belgrave Hoppner was present for and part of many of the key episodes of Byron’s life in Venice and the Veneto. From their earliest engagement, when Hoppner offered to lease Byron his villa at Este, the consul was an advocate for the celebrated poet, advising him on aspects of life in northeastern Italy, on dealing with the locals, sharing gossip, assisting with the well-being of Byron’s illegitimate daughter, Allegra (including housing her for a few months), providing candid observations about Byron’s countless affairs (both formal and ad hoc), and sharing a need for physical exercise, manifested in the most celebrated fashion by Hoppner’s accompaniment of Byron on an open-water swim from the Lido to the mouth of the Grand Canal in June 1818.
The friendship lasted only during Byron’s few years in Venice, but their familiarity, seen in their collected letters (and in a short poem Byron wrote to celebrate the birth of Hoppner’s son) demonstrates a camaraderie that could well have survived had Byron done the same.

Admission is Free but booking is required due to the limited number of seats (write to info@keats-shelley-house.org). Entry from 4:45 p.m. onwards.

The event will also be streamed via Zoom. If you'd like to attend online, please send us an email and we'll share the link with you.

John Wilson is the director emeritus of the Timken Museum of Art in San Diego, California, and an independent scholar, curator, and art collection consultant who has lived across the Unites States and in London. Currently he is revising and rewriting for publication the manuscript catalogue of British paintings at the Cincinnati Art Museum. Previous to his work at the Timken Dr Wilson was director of curatorial affairs and chief curator at the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, Nebraska; consultative curator of painting and sculpture at Cincinnati’s Taft Museum of Art; curator of painting and sculpture at the Cincinnati Art Museum; and curator of European and American art at the Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, where he also was assistant professor of art history. Originally from Fort Worth, Texas, he has a PhD and MA in History of Art from the Courtauld Institute of Art, London (where his thesis examined the artist John Hoppner), and a BA in Art History from Southern Methodist University in Dallas.  He is chairman of the Conservation Patron Council of Save Venice.