Sir Charles John Holmes

Sir Charles John Holmes, KCVO (11 November 1868, Preston, Lancashire – 7 December 1936, Kensington, London) was a British painter, art historian and museum director.

Holmes was Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford University (1904 to 1910). At the same time he co-edited The Burlington Magazine from 1904 to 1909. Holmes was appointed director of the National Portrait Gallery in 1909, resigning in 1916 to become Director of the National Gallery, from which he retired in 1928.

His writing on art combined theory with practice, and he was an expert on the painting techniques of the Old Masters, from whose example he had learned to draw and paint.