William Martin Conway, 1st Baron Conway of Allington, (12 April 1856 – 19 April 1937), known between 1895 and 1931 as Sir Martin Conway, was an English art critic, politician, cartographer and mountaineer, who made expeditions in Europe as well as in South America and Asia.
Conway occupied several university positions and from 1918 to 1931 was a representative of the Combined English Universities as a conservative member of the House of Commons.
In 1872 he took up mountain climbing and went on expeditions to Spitsbergen from 1896 to 1897 and the Andes of Bolivia in 1898. He is an author of books on art and exploration, which include Mountain Memories (1920), Art Treasures of Soviet Russia (1925), and Giorgione as a Landscape Painter (1929).
Background and education
Conway was born at Rochester, England, on 12 April 1856, the son of Reverend William Conway, who later became rector of St Margaret's, Westminster. He was the youngest of three children, having two older sisters, Elizabeth Ann (1852–1916) and Martha (1854–1938). He was educated at Repton and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied mathematics and became a close friend of Karl Pearson. It is also at Cambridge that he met Henry Bradshaw, then a librarian, and John Ruskin, who introduced Conway to art and the Alps. He became interested in woodcuts, engraving and early printed books; his History of the Woodcutters of the Netherlands in the Fifteenth Century was published in 1884.
Mountaineering
Conway was a member of the Alpine Club, of which he was president from 1902 to 1904.
