Biography

British mountaineer and art historian. Martin Conway was born in Rochester, Kent, where his father was a church minister. He attended Cambridge University, reading mathematics and history (BA 1879, MA 1882), and made a study tour of European libraries in 1880 inspired by a passion for early printing and engraving. The resulting work, Woodcutters of the Netherlands in the Fifteenth Century (1884) was one of the first of 30 books he would pen in his lifetime.

Also an ambitious climber (he was elected to the Alpine Club in 1877), his first ascent was of Breithorn in the Alps while an undergraduate. He went on to map a substantial part of the Karakoram Range in the Himalayas in 1892, for which he was knighted. He crossed the Alpine range from Monte Viso to Gross Glockner in 1894 and scaled the mounts Aconcagua, Illimani and Illampu in 1898 while surveying the Bolivian Andes (described in his eponymous 1901 publication). He also explored the interior of Spitsbergen (1896-1897) and the Tierra del Fuego archipelago.

After retiring from mountaineering in 1901 he took up the post of Slade Professor of Fine Arts at the University of Cambridge (1901-1904), where he had lectured in the 1880s before becoming an art professor at University College, Liverpool (1884-1887). A prolific author on both art history and his adventures on mountains around the world, his 1881 Zermatt Pocketbook became the model for the Conway and Coolidge's Climbers' Guides.

Conway's later career was spent in politics as a Unionist Member of Parliament for the Combined English Universities (1918-1931). He died in 1937 in London, having been given a baronetcy in 1931. He received many awards and honours for his myriad achievements during his lifetime, which also included founding the Imperial War Museum (of which he was Director-General) and creating a large photographic collection of art and architecture, now housed at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London.

Sources:
J. Evans, 1966, The Conways: a history of three generations
P.H. Hansen, "Conway, (William) Martin, Baron Conway of Allington (1856-1937)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
C.W. and others, 1937, "In memoriam: Lord Conway of Allington, 1856-1937", Alpine Journal, 49: 248-259.