PATER, WALTER. - English critic and novelist, leader of Decadent aestheticism, b. at Shadwell on 4 Aug. 1839, d. at Oxford on 30 July 1894.
In his Studies in the history of the Renaissance (1873) he seems to identify melancholy as the dominant motif of Renaissance art. His Imaginary portraits (1887), portraits half historical and half fantastic,
are likewise the projection of a melancholy contemplation of beauty, and his only novel, Marius the epicurean (1885), is a pretext for setting forth the principles of a refined Epicureanism that stops at the threshold of Christian experience, only barely touched upon by the protagonist, who nevertheless dies almost like a martyr. This idolatry of beauty as an essential experience of life fascinated P.'s disciples, and Oscar Wilde in particular, often degenerating into a more empirical hedonism.