John Collier | |
---|---|
![]() John Collier by his first wife Marian, née Huxley, 1882 | |
Born | John Maler Collier 27 January 1850 Paddington, Middlesex, England |
Died | 11 April 1934 (aged 84) North House, Eton Avenue, London |
Education | Eton; Slade School of Fine Art |
Known for | Painter |
Movement | Pre-Raphaelite; Orientalist |
Spouse(s) | Marian Huxley Ethel Huxley |
John Maler Collier OBE ROI RP ( /ˈkɒliər/ ; 27 January 1850 – 11 April 1934) was a British painter and writer. [1] He painted in the Pre-Raphaelite style, and was one of the most prominent portrait painters of his generation. Both of his marriages were to daughters of Thomas Henry Huxley. He was educated at Eton College, and he studied painting in Paris with Jean-Paul Laurens and at the Munich Academy starting in 1875.
Collier was from a talented and successful family. His grandfather, John Collier, was a Quaker merchant who became a member of parliament. His father, Robert, ( was a member of parliament, Attorney General and, for many years, a full-time judge of the Privy Council) was created the first Lord Monkswell. He was also a member of the Royal Society of British Artists, and had artists' studios in his home at 7 Chelsea Embankment for the use of John and his wife Marion. [2] John Collier's elder brother, the second Lord Monkswell, was Under-Secretary of State for War and Chairman of the London County Council.
In due course, Collier became an integral part of the family of Thomas Henry Huxley PC, President of the Royal Society from 1883 to 1885. Collier married two of Huxley's daughters and was "on terms of intimate friendship" with his son, the writer Leonard Huxley. Collier's first wife, in 1879, was Marian Huxley (Mady). She was a painter who studied, like her husband, at the Slade and exhibited at the Royal Academy and elsewhere. In 1881, the couple settled in Tite Street, Chelsea, in a purpose built studio house, alongside their friend Anna Lea Merritt. [2] After the birth of their only child—a daughter, Joyce—, Marion suffered severe post-natal depression and was taken to Paris for treatment where, however, she contracted pneumonia and died in 1887. Joyce became a portrait miniaturist and was a member of the Royal Society of Miniature Painters.
In 1889 Collier married Mady's younger sister Ethel Huxley. [3] Until the Deceased Wife's Sister's Marriage Act 1907 such a marriage was not possible in England, so the ceremony took place in Norway. By his second wife he had a daughter and a son, Sir Laurence Collier, who was the British Ambassador to Norway 1941–1951.
Collier's range of portrait subjects was broad. In 1893, for example, his subjects included Lovelace Stamer, Bishop of Shrewsbury; Sir John Lubbock FRS; A N Hornby (Captain of the Lancashire Eleven); Edward Augustus Inglefield (Admiral and Arctic explorer).
His commissioned portrait of the Duke of York (later George V) as Master of Trinity House in 1901, and the Prince of Wales (later Edward VIII) were his major royal portraits. The latter work was hung in Durbar Hall, Jodhpur, Rajputana.
Other subjects included two Lord Chancellors (the Earl of Selborne in 1882 and the Earl of Halsbury) in 1897; The Speaker of the House of Commons, William Gully, (1897); senior legal figures the Lord Chief Justice Lord Alverstone (1912) and the Master of the Rolls Sir George Jessel (1881). [4]
Rudyard Kipling (1891); the painter Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1884); the actors J.L. Toole (1887) and Madge Kendal, Ellen Terry and Herbert Beerbohm Tree (in The Merry Wives of Windsor ) (1904); heads of educational institutions such as the Master of Balliol Edward Caird (1904), the Warden of Wadham G.E. Thorley (1889) and the Provost of Eton (1897) were also subjects for Collier. His portraits also include those of soldiers such as Field Marshal Lord Kitchener of Khartoum (1911) and Field Marshal Sir Frederick Haines (1891); two Indian maharajahs, including the Maharajah of Nepal (1910); and scientists including Charles Darwin (1882), the artist's father-in-law Professor Huxley (1891), William Kingdom Clifford, James Prescott Joule and Sir Michael Foster (1907). Clark reports a total of thirty-two Huxley family portraits during the half-century after his first marriage. [5]
A photocopy of John Collier's Sitters Book (made in 1962 from the original in the possession of the artist's son) can be consulted in the Heinz Archive and Library, National Portrait Gallery. [6] This is the artist's own handwritten record of all his portraits, including name of subject, date, fee charged, and details of any major exhibitions of the picture in question. [7]
Collier died in 1934. His entry in the Dictionary of National Biography (volume for 1931–40, published 1949) compares his work to that of Frank Holl because of its solemnity. This is only true, however, of his many portraits of distinguished old men – his portraits of younger men, women and children, and his so-called "problem pictures", covering scenes of ordinary life, are often very bright and fresh.
His entry in the Dictionary of Art (1996 vol 7, p569), by Geoffrey Ashton, refers to the invisibility of his brush strokes as a "rather unexciting and flat use of paint" but contrasts that with "Collier's strong and surprising sense of colour" which "created a disconcerting verisimilitude in both mood and appearance".
The Dictionary of Portrait Painters in Britain up to 1920 (1997) describes his portraits as "painterly works with a fresh use of light and colour".
Sixteen of John Collier's paintings are now in the collections of the National Portrait Gallery in London, and two are in the Tate Gallery. Four of the National Portrait Gallery paintings were in December 1997 on display: John Burns, Sir William Huggins, Thomas Huxley (the artist's father in law) and Charles Darwin (copies of the last two are also prominently displayed at the top of the staircase at the Athenaeum Club in London).
A 1907 self-portrait has been preserved in the Uffizi in Florence which presumably commissioned it as part of its celebrated collection of artists’ self-portraits.
Other pictures may be seen in houses and institutions open to the public: his Clytemnestra , a large and striking painting of the mythical figure, is in the Guildhall Gallery of the City of London. The Death Sentence was given by the widow of the artist to Wolverhampton Art Gallery. His portrait of the Earl of Onslow (1903), is at Clandon Park, Surrey (National Trust). His full-length portrait of Sir Charles Tertius Mander, first baronet, is at Owlpen Manor, Gloucestershire, with another version in the collection of the National Trust at Wightwick Manor, and his Lady Godiva is in the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum. "A glass of wine with Caesar Borgia" 1893, can be seen hanging in the atrium of Ipswich Town Hall.
Reproductions of many others, from various collections, may be consulted in the John Collier box in the National Portrait Gallery Heinz Archive and Library, and a good selection is published in The Art of the Honourable John Collier by W.H. Pollock (1914). His work was also included in the Great Victorian Pictures exhibition mounted by the Arts Council in 1978 (catalogue, p27).
Collier's views on religion and ethics are interesting for their comparison with the views of Thomas and Julian Huxley, both of whom gave Romanes lectures on that subject. Collier (1926) [8] explains
On secular morality:
His views on ethics, then, were very close to the agnosticism of T.H. Huxley and the humanism of Julian Huxley.
On the idea of God:
And
And on the Church:
And on non-conformists:
Augustus Edwin John was a Welsh painter, draughtsman, and etcher. For a time he was considered the most important artist at work in Britain: Virginia Woolf remarked that by 1908 the era of John Singer Sargent and Charles Wellington Furse "was over. The age of Augustus John was dawning." He was the younger brother of the painter Gwen John.
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a group of English painters, poets, and art critics, founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Michael Rossetti, James Collinson, Frederic George Stephens and Thomas Woolner who formed a seven-member "Brotherhood" modelled in part on the Nazarene movement. The Brotherhood was only ever a loose association and their principles were shared by other artists of the time, including Ford Madox Brown, Arthur Hughes and Marie Spartali Stillman. Later followers of the principles of the Brotherhood included Edward Burne-Jones, William Morris and John William Waterhouse.
John Hoppner was an English portrait painter, much influenced by Reynolds, who achieved fame as a brilliant colourist.
Sir David Wilkie was a Scottish painter, especially known for his genre scenes. He painted successfully in a wide variety of genres, including historical scenes, portraits, including formal royal ones, and scenes from his travels to Europe and the Middle East. His main base was in London, but he died and was buried at sea, off Gibraltar, returning from his first trip to the Middle East. He was sometimes known as the "people's painter".
Sir Henry Raeburn was a Scottish portrait painter. He served as Portrait Painter to King George IV in Scotland.
Daniel Maclise was an Irish history painter, literary and portrait painter, and illustrator, who worked for most of his life in London, England.
George Frederic Watts was a British painter and sculptor associated with the Symbolist movement. He said "I paint ideas, not things." Watts became famous in his lifetime for his allegorical works, such as Hope and Love and Life. These paintings were intended to form part of an epic symbolic cycle called the "House of Life", in which the emotions and aspirations of life would all be represented in a universal symbolic language.
Sir John Lavery was a Northern Irish painter best known for his portraits and wartime depictions.
George Richmond was an English painter and portraitist. In his youth he was a member of The Ancients, a group of followers of William Blake. Later in life he established a career as a portrait painter, which included painting the portraits of the British gentry, nobility and royalty.
Sir Hubert von Herkomer was a Bavarian-born British painter, pioneering film-director, and composer. Though a very successful portrait artist, especially of men, he is mainly remembered for his earlier works that took a realistic approach to the conditions of life of the poor. Hard Times showing the distraught family of a travelling day-labourer at the side of a road, is one of his best-known works.
The Huxley family is a British family; several of its members have excelled in science, medicine, arts and literature. The family also includes members who occupied senior positions in the public service of the United Kingdom.
Sir James Guthrie was a Scottish painter, best known in his own lifetime for his portraiture, although today more generally regarded as a painter of Scottish Realism.
Sir John Campbell Longstaff was an Australian painter, war artist and a five-time winner of the Archibald Prize for portraiture. His cousin Will Longstaff was also a painter and war artist.
Sir Peter Francis Lewis Bourgeois RA was a landscape painter and history painter, and court painter to king George III of the United Kingdom.
Edwin Longsden Long was a British genre, history, biblical and portrait painter.
A Private View at the Royal Academy, 1881 is a painting by the English artist William Powell Frith exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 1883. It depicts a group of distinguished Victorians visiting the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in 1881, just after the death of the Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, whose portrait by John Everett Millais was included on a screen at the special request of Queen Victoria. The room is Gallery III, the largest and most imposing room at Burlington House.
George Phoenix (1863–1935) was a British (Victorian/Edwardian) landscape, figurative and portrait artist and sculptor. He regularly exhibited his works in his native Wolverhampton and nationally. They are represented at Wolverhampton Art Gallery and other galleries of the Midlands, and at the National Portrait Gallery.
Lowes Cato Dickinson was an English portrait painter and Christian socialist. He taught drawing with John Ruskin and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. He was a founder of the Working Men's College in London.
Alfred Ernest Egerton Cooper, RBA, ARCA, was a British painter of portraits, landscapes and other figurative work. In the era of Modernism, he continued to work in traditional style from his studio in Chelsea, London.
Marian "Mady" Collier also spelled as Marion Huxley, was a British 19th-century painter and is associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link)