Riviere worked for Punch, chiefly in decorative initials, and drew illustrations for English and American magazines, notably for Good Words, and for some of the novels of Mrs. Craik. The list of his exhibits at the Royal Academy includes portraits and etchings, and also some sculpture. He was elected associate in 1877 and academician in 1880. After the death of Sir John Millais (1896) he narrowly missed election as president, somewhat to his relief, it was believed, as delicate health had long precluded him from social and official activities. In 1891 his university conferred upon him the honorary degree of D.C.L., and Oriel College elected him to an honorary fellowship in 1910. A man of distinguished presence, courteous manner, and wide culture, Riviere had many friends. He died in London 20 April 1920. He had five sons, one of whom, Hugh Goldwin Riviere, is the well-known portrait painter, and two daughters.
A portrait of Riviere by Sir H. von Herkomer is in the Royal Academy, and another excellent likeness, by the same painter, figures in the group of the ‘Hanging Committee of the Royal Academy’ in the Tate Gallery. A bronze head by Onslow Ford is in the Common Room at Oriel College.
There are six pictures by Riviere in the Tate Gallery, among which are the ‘Miracle of the Gadarene Swine’, ‘Giants at Play’, ‘Beyond Man's Footsteps’, and a study for ‘Sympathy’, the finished picture of which is, with ‘An Anxious Moment’, at the Royal Holloway College. ‘The Last Spoonful’ is in the Schwabe collection at Hamburg, ‘A Roman Holiday’ in the gallery at Sydney. ‘The King Drinks’, one of his many lion pictures, is in the Diploma Gallery, and a noble ‘Prometheus’, painted in 1889, was given by his family to the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, in 1920, in accordance with his wishes. A water-colour drawing, ‘Fox and Geese’, is in the Victoria and Albert Museum.
In the popular mind Riviere occupied the place of successor to Sir Edwin Landseer. Without Landseer's amazingly facile draughtsmanship and bravura brushwork, Riviere possessed the more serious and solid mentality of his own age: this restrained him also from the over-infusion of human traits and feelings into his animals, which was Landseer's besetting fault. Riviere himself took most interest and pride in those of his pictures in which animal life, or at least its more homely and humorous aspects, played least part. Works like the beautiful ‘Ganymede’ (in the possession of his family), the ‘Prometheus’, and the ‘Gadarene Swine’ show how fully he was justified in this, and cause regret that the public should have fastened upon his groups of children and dogs, admirable in their way, as his most characteristic productions.
[The Times, 21 April 1920; Sir W. Armstrong, Briton Riviere, R.A.; His Life and Work, with list of works till 1891, illustrated, in The Art Annual, 1891; Wilfrid Meynell, Some Modern Artists and their Work, illustrated, 1883; Algernon Graves, The Royal Academy of Arts, Dictionary of Contributors, 1905–1906; Catalogues of the Exhibitions of the Royal Academy of Arts 1904–20.]
ROBERTS, FREDERICK SLEIGH, first Earl Roberts, of Kandahar, Pretoria, and Waterford (1832–1914), field-marshal, the younger son of General Sir Abraham Roberts [q.v.] by his wife, Isabella, widow of Major Hamilton Maxwell, and daughter of Abraham Bunbury, of Kilfeacle, co. Tipperary, was born at Cawnpore 30 September 1832. Roberts was one of many distinguished soldiers whom Ireland has sent to the service of the Empire, his family having long been settled in county Waterford. He was brought home from India at the age of two; when thirteen he was sent to Eton; and after one year there he passed second into Sandhurst at the age of fourteen, joining in January 1847. His father, however, wished Frederick to follow his own example and enter the East India Company's service. Accordingly, after waiting some time for a vacancy, he went to the training college at Addiscombe, from which he was gazetted on 12 December 1851 to the Bengal Artillery.
Roberts landed in India in April 1852 and in the same year joined his father, who was in command at Peshawar, to serve both as aide-de-camp and as battery officer. He obtained an introduction to the problems of the North-West Frontier and to the character and customs of the tribesmen of the Himalaya, under his father, who had much experience of active service in India and was for a time in command of a brigade of native levies in Kabul, which he left a few months before the disastrous retreat from Kabul in January 1842. In 1854 Roberts gained the distinction, coveted by every young gunner, of the Horse Artillery jacket. He was serving in the Bengal Horse Artillery when, in May 1857, news reached Peshawar of the outbreak of the Mutiny at Meerut. A mobile column was formed in
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