Robert Polhill Bevan was a painter of horses and landscapes associated with the Camden Town Group. He was born in Hove, near Brighton in 1865.

In 1888 he went to study at the Westminster School of Art under Fred Brown. He then moved on to the Académie Julian in Paris, where he studied alongside Paul Sérusier, Pierre Bonnard and Edouard Vuillard.

Influenced by Paul Gauguin, he developed a Pointillist style, but in the later years his style changed, becoming thicker, more textured and Cubist in style.

Bevan spent most of his time painting horse-trading and London streets scenes, but during his time in the country he painted many images of the Devonshire landscape.

Bevan was a member of The Camden Town Group, which was a small group of English Post-Impressionists. The group regularly met at the house of Walter Sickert, in Camden Town. The group included artists Harold Gilman, Spencer Frederick Gore, Wyndham Lewis, Augustus John, Charles Ginner and many more.

During the First World War Bevan was arrested for being out drawing after curfew in Camden Town. As Bevan was over the age of 38 at the outbreak of the war, he was too old to enlist; instead he left London and rented a house near Applehayes in Devon where he stayed every summer for 3 years.

He died in 1925.