Pater, Walter Horatio (1839-1894)

English scholar, essayist, and art critic. He published Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873), which expressed the idea of ‘art for art's sake’ that influenced the Aesthetic Movement.

His other works include the novel Marius the Epicurean (1885), in which the solitary hero, living under the Roman imperium of Marcus Aurelius, meditates on beauty, Paganism, and Christianity; Imaginary Portraits (1887); Appreciations with an Essay on Style (1889); and Plato and Platonism (1893). Greek Studies and Miscellaneous Studies appeared posthumously in 1895.

He was born in London and educated at King's School, Canterbury, and Queen's College, Oxford. He became a fellow of Brasenose College and spent most of his life there, travelling on the Continent or living in London during the vacations. He became interested in art through Ruskin's influence, and built a reputation as the leading authority on aesthetics. In 1894 he published his autobiographical study The Child in the House. He was a master of polished and cultured prose.