Sir Thomas Fairbairn, 2nd Baronet DL (18 January 1823 – 12 August 1891) was an English industrialist and art collector.
Fairbairn was born in the Polygon in Ardwick, near the centre of Manchester. He was the third of eight surviving children of Dorothy Mar and Sir William Fairbairn (1789–1874). His father was a Scottish engineer who moved to Manchester in the early 19th century, where he designed bridges, and established a business, William Fairbairn & Sons, that was involved in iron founding, boilermaking, ship building, and manufacturing steam locomotives. He was a nephew of Peter Fairbairn of Leeds - also an engineer like his brother - and first cousin of MP Andrew Fairbairn. [1]
After a private education, Thomas Fairbairn worked in his father's businesses from 1840, and took charge of the firm's shipbuilding operation in Millwall. After a tour of Italy in 1841–2, he started to use his industrial wealth to collect paintings.
He was High Sheriff of Hampshire in 1870 and succeeded his father as 2nd Baronet in 1874. [1]
Fairbairn was impressed by the works of William Holman Hunt exhibited at the 1853 Royal Academy exhibition, and commissioned Hunt to complete his 1853 painting The Awakening Conscience , although he asked Hunt to repaint the expression of the female figure. He also persuaded Hunt to make changes to his 1854 painting The Scapegoat . Fairbairn commissioned a group portrait of his wife and five children from Hunt in 1864, which became his The Children's Holiday . Although he acquired portraits from Hunt, Fairbairn generally preferred Pre-Raphaelite landscapes and historical painting. He commissioned paintings by Edward Lear, and sculptures by Thomas Woolner, including a life-sized marble sculpture of his two deaf children in 1857–1862. [2]
Fairburn was a commissioner of the 1851 Great Exhibition, and chairman of the Executive Committee that organised the 1857 Art Treasures Exhibition in Manchester, selecting the firm that built the temporary exhibition building, C. D. Young & Co, who were already building the Museum of Science and Art in South Kensington (later the Victoria and Albert Museum). His friend Augustus Egg was appointed as director of the gallery of Modern Masters at the exhibition, with many of Fairburn's favourite Pre-Raphaelites being selected. He was responsible for the decision to purchase Jules Soulages's collection for £13,500, to form the core of the collection of medieval and Renaissance decorative arts. It was later sold in instalments to the V&A. Fairbairn was offered a knighthood for his efforts, but declined. [2]
Fairbairn worked on the International Exhibitions of 1862, 1867 and 1871. From 1860, he struggled with a project to open a new, free new art gallery for Manchester, which finally opened as the City Art Gallery in 1882. He was elected to the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 in May 1861. [2]
Many of his pictures were auctioned off in the 1890s, and the remainder of the collection was broken up after his death from a stroke. [3]
On 23 March 1848, he married Allison Callaway, a daughter of Thomas Callaway, and settled back in Manchester. In around 1862, he moved to Burton Park, near Petworth in Sussex, but moved to Brambridge House, in Bishopstoke near Southampton, by 1866. Thomas and Allison were the parents of at least five children together, two of whom (his son Arthur and daughter Constance), were born deaf. Their children included: [1]
He died in Bishopstoke, Hampshire, on 12 August 1891 and was buried at Twyford church. He was succeeded in the baronetcy by his son, Arthur. [1]
Ford Madox Brown was a British painter of moral and historical subjects, notable for his distinctively graphic and often Hogarthian version of the Pre-Raphaelite style. Arguably, his most notable painting was Work (1852–1865). Brown spent the latter years of his life painting the twelve works known as The Manchester Murals, depicting Mancunian history, for Manchester Town Hall.
Sir John Everett Millais, 1st Baronet was an English painter and illustrator who was one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. He was a child prodigy who, aged eleven, became the youngest student to enter the Royal Academy Schools. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was founded at his family home in London, at 83 Gower Street. Millais became the most famous exponent of the style, his painting Christ in the House of His Parents (1849–50) generating considerable controversy, and he produced a picture that could serve as the embodiment of the historical and naturalist focus of the group, Ophelia, in 1851–52.
Thomas Woolner was an English sculptor and poet who was one of the founder-members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. He was the only sculptor among the original members.
William Holman Hunt was an English painter and one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. His paintings were notable for their great attention to detail, vivid colour, and elaborate symbolism. These features were influenced by the writings of John Ruskin and Thomas Carlyle, according to whom the world itself should be read as a system of visual signs. For Hunt it was the duty of the artist to reveal the correspondence between sign and fact. Of all the members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Hunt remained most true to their ideals throughout his career. He was always keen to maximise the popular appeal and public visibility of his works.
Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, 1st Baronet, was an English painter and designer associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood's style and subject matter.
John Maler Collier was a British painter and writer. 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.
Henry Holiday was an English Victorian painter of historical genre and landscapes, also a stained-glass designer, illustrator, and sculptor. He was influenced by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, many of whom he knew.
Walter Crane was an English artist and book illustrator. He is considered to be the most influential, and among the most prolific, children's book creators of his generation and, along with Randolph Caldecott and Kate Greenaway, one of the strongest contributors to the child's nursery motif that the genre of English children's illustrated literature would exhibit in its developmental stages in the later 19th century.
Valentine Cameron "Val" Prinsep was a British painter of the Pre-Raphaelite school.
Alfred William Hunt, was a British painter. He was son of the landscapist Andrew Hunt.
Thomas Cooper Gotch or T. C. Gotch (1854–1931) was an English painter and book illustrator loosely associated with the Pre-Raphaelite movement; he was the brother of John Alfred Gotch, the architect.
Frank Cadogan Cowper was an English painter and illustrator of portraits, historical and literary scenes, also described as "The Last Pre-Raphaelite".
Edward Robert Hughes was a British painter, who primarily worked in watercolours, but also produced a number of oil paintings. He was influenced by his uncle and artist, Arthur Hughes who was associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and worked closely with one of the Brotherhood's founders, William Holman Hunt.
Charles Edward Perugini, originally Carlo Perugini, was an Italian-born English painter of the Romantic and Victorian era.
Sir Coutts Lindsay, 2nd Baronet, was a British artist and watercolourist.
The Awakening Conscience (1853) is an oil-on-canvas painting by the English artist William Holman Hunt, one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, which depicts a woman rising from her position in a man's lap and gazing transfixed out room's window.
Frederick Cayley Robinson was an English artist who created paintings and applied art, including book illustrations and theatre set designs. Cayley Robinson continued to paint striking Pre-Raphaelite and Victorian subjects well into the twentieth century despite this approach becoming deeply unfashionable.
Sir William John Milliken-Napier, 8th Baronet of Merchiston was a Scottish politician.
Sir Robert John Milliken-Napier, 9th Baronet of Merchiston was a Scottish baronet and Army officer.