Henry Holiday (17 June 183915 April 1927) was a British historical
genre
Genre () is any form or type of communication in any mode (written, spoken, digital, artistic, etc.) with socially-agreed-upon conventions developed over time. In popular usage, it normally describes a category of literature, music, or other for ...
and landscape painter,
stained-glass
Stained glass is coloured glass as a material or works created from it. Throughout its thousand-year history, the term has been applied almost exclusively to the windows of churches and other significant religious buildings. Although tradition ...
designer, illustrator, and sculptor. He is part of the
Pre-Raphaelite
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (later known as the Pre-Raphaelites) 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 ...
school of art.
Life
Early years and training
![The Last supper](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c6/The_Last_Supper.jpg)
Holiday was born in London. He showed an early aptitude for art and was given lessons by
William Cave Thomas. He attended
Leigh's art academy (where a fellow student was
Frederick Walker) and in 1855, at the age of 15, was admitted to the
Royal Academy Schools
The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly in London. Founded in 1768, it has a unique position as an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects. Its purpo ...
. Through his friendship with
Albert Moore and
Simeon Solomon
Simeon Solomon (9 October 1840 – 14 August 1905) was a British painter associated with the Pre-Raphaelites who was noted for his depictions of Jewish life and same-sex desire. His career was cut short as a result of public scandal following h ...
he was introduced to the artists
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti (12 May 1828 – 9 April 1882), generally known as Dante Gabriel Rossetti (), was an English poet, illustrator, painter, translator and member of the Rossetti family. He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhoo ...
,
Edward Burne-Jones
Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, 1st Baronet, (; 28 August, 183317 June, 1898) was a British painter and designer associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood which included Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Millais, Ford Madox Brown and Holman Hun ...
and
William Morris
William Morris (24 March 1834 – 3 October 1896) was a British textile designer, poet, artist, novelist, architectural conservationist, printer, translator and socialist activist associated with the British Arts and Crafts Movement. He ...
of the
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (later known as the Pre-Raphaelites) 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 ...
. This movement was to be pivotal in his future artistic and political life.
![Dante and beatrice](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/Dante_and_beatrice.jpg)
In the same year, 1855, Holiday made a journey to the
Lake District
The Lake District, also known as the Lakes or Lakeland, is a mountainous region in North West England. A popular holiday destination, it is famous for its lakes, forests, and mountains (or ''fells''), and its associations with William Wordswor ...
. This was to be the first of many trips to the area, where he would often holiday for long periods of time. Whilst there, he spent much of his time sketching the views which were to be seen from the various hills and mountains. He wrote, "For concentrated loveliness, I know nothing that can quite compare with the lakes and mountains of Westmorland, Cumberland and Lancashire".
Paintings
Holiday worked in both oils and watercolours. In 1858, his first picture, a landscape painting, was exhibited at the
Royal Academy
The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly in London. Founded in 1768, it has a unique position as an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects. Its pur ...
and immediately sold; from that year his work was frequently shown at the Academy and elsewhere. Other pictures include:
* ''The Burgess of Calais'' (1859).
* ''The Bride and the Daughters of Jerusalem'' (1861–63). In his ''Reminiscences'', Holiday explains that the painting was 'more ambitious than anything I had hitherto undertaken'. It showed the daughters of Jerusalem asking the Bride where her Beloved had gone (see
Song of Solomon 6:1) and stood at 4 feet 6 inches by 3 feet, containing seven figures (including a little girl) and a full background of foliage. He began work on it among the scenery of North Wales in 1861 but in 1863 it was rejected by the Royal Academy selection committee, unlike his two previous figure paintings. Holiday described this as 'a heavy blow' but 'the rejections this year were of so extraordinary a character, and the show of the work on the walls was so poor, that there was a general storm of indignation' (''Reminiscences'' p 95). At the suggestion of
Holman Hunt
William Holman Hunt (2 April 1827 – 7 September 1910) 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 symbolis ...
, a number of rejected paintings were exhibited instead at the Cosmopolitan Club, which attracted attention and acclaim from visitors including
William Makepeace Thackeray
William Makepeace Thackeray (; 18 July 1811 – 24 December 1863) was a British novelist, author and illustrator. He is known for his satirical works, particularly his 1848 novel '' Vanity Fair'', a panoramic portrait of British society, and t ...
(p. 96).
James McNeill Whistler
James Abbott McNeill Whistler (; July 10, 1834July 17, 1903) was an American painter active during the American Gilded Age and based primarily in the United Kingdom. He eschewed sentimentality and moral allusion in painting and was a leading pr ...
singled out Holiday's painting and said "Do you mean to say they rejected that!".
Richard Redgrave
Richard Redgrave (30 April 1804 in Pimlico, London – 14 December 1888 in Kensington, London) was an English landscape artist, genre painter and administrator.
Early life
He was born in Pimlico, London, at 2 Belgrave Terrace, the second son o ...
, himself a member of the Royal Academy, attempted to apologise for and explain the Royal Academy's selection, saying 'You know they can't hang everything that comes in higgledy-piggledy'; to which Whistler replied 'Why, what do you call your present exhibition, isn't that higgledy – and ''particularly'' piggledy?' (p. 96). The painting was bought from the artist by Thomas Milward Kitchin, later of Great Down in
Seale, Surrey
Seale is a village in Surrey, England. Seale covers most of the civil parish of Seale and Sands and the steep slope and foot of the south side of the Hog's Back (mid-western section of the North Downs between Farnham and Guildford) as well as a ...
, but has now disappeared. There is, however, a full page illustration of it between pp 96–97 of the ''Reminiscences''.
* ''The Rhine Maidens'' (1879). The subject matter was taken from
Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most op ...
's opera ''
Das Rheingold
''Das Rheingold'' (; ''The Rhinegold''), WWV 86A, is the first of the four music dramas that constitute Richard Wagner's ''Der Ring des Nibelungen'' (English: ''The Ring of the Nibelung''). It was performed, as a single opera, at the National ...
''. In order to properly visualise the picture, Holiday modelled the three Rhine maidens in clay and placed them in a tank of blue-green tinted water together with clay "rocks".
* ''
Dante and Beatrice
Dante Alighieri (; – 14 September 1321), probably baptized Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri and often referred to as Dante (, ), was an Italian poet, writer and philosopher. His ''Divine Comedy'', originally called (modern Italian: '' ...
'', exhibited at the
Grosvenor Gallery
The Grosvenor Gallery was an art gallery in London founded in 1877 by Sir Coutts Lindsay and his wife Blanche. Its first directors were J. Comyns Carr and Charles Hallé. The gallery proved crucial to the Aesthetic Movement because it provided ...
in 1883. In 1881, Holiday had travelled to
Florence
Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilancio demografico an ...
in order to make studies for this picture, and carried out meticulous research to ensure that the correct buildings and architectural features were present. He also created rough clay models of some of the buildings to set the scene. The pigeons in the picture were painted by
John Trivett Nettleship
John Trivett Nettleship (11 February 1841 – 31 August
1902) was an English artist, known as a painter of animals and in particular lions. He was also an author and book illustrator.
Life
He was born in Kettering, Northamptonshire on 11 Februa ...
.
* ''Charity'', a stained-glass window design (1887, Royal Academy), ''Terpsichore'', ''Cleopatra'', ''Sleep'', ''The Lute player'', ''The Temple of Philae'', ''Hawes Water'' (1918, watercolour) and many others.
Holiday spent much time at the studios of Sir
Edward Burne-Jones
Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, 1st Baronet, (; 28 August, 183317 June, 1898) was a British painter and designer associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood which included Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Millais, Ford Madox Brown and Holman Hun ...
, where groups of artists would meet to discuss, exchange and pool ideas. The influence of Burne-Jones can be seen in Holiday's work.
Stained glass
![Henry Holiday weaving and spinning in ancient Egypt](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e1/Henry_Holiday_weaving_and_spinning_in_ancient_Egypt.jpg)
In 1861, Holiday accepted the position of stained glass window designer for
Powell's Glass Works, after Burne-Jones had left to work for
Morris & Co. During his time there he fulfilled over 300 commissions, mostly for customers in the United States. He left in 1891 to set up his own
glass works
Glass production involves two main methods – the float glass process that produces sheet glass, and glassblowing that produces bottles and other containers. It has been done in a variety of ways during the history of glass.
Glass container ...
in
Hampstead
Hampstead () is an area in London, which lies northwest of Charing Cross, and extends from Watling Street, the A5 road (Roman Watling Street) to Hampstead Heath, a large, hilly expanse of parkland. The area forms the northwest part of the Lon ...
, producing stained glass, mosaics, enamels and sacerdotal objects.
Holiday's stained glass work can be found all over Britain. Some of his best is at the chapel of
Worcester College, Oxford
Worcester College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. The college was founded in 1714 by the benefaction of Sir Thomas Cookes, 2nd Baronet (1648–1701) of Norgrove, Worcestershire, whose coat of arms w ...
(c.1865);
Westminster Abbey
Westminster Abbey, formally titled the Collegiate Church of Saint Peter at Westminster, is an historic, mainly Gothic church in the City of Westminster, London, England, just to the west of the Palace of Westminster. It is one of the United ...
(the Isambard Kingdom Brunel memorial window, 1868);
St Luke's Church, Kentish Town
St Luke's Kentish Town is an active Church of England parish church on Oseney Crescent in Kentish Town, North London, closed from 1991 to 2011 and now hosting a Holy Trinity Brompton church plant. The church has been designated by English Her ...
;
St Mary Magdalene, Paddington (1869); and
Chartered Accountants' Hall
Chartered Accountants' Hall is a Grade II* listed building located at 1 Moorgate Place in the City of London. It is the headquarters of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England & Wales (ICAEW). The Hall is one of the richest example ...
, Moorgate. In 2018, four of his stained-glass windows were reinstalled in Chartered Accountants' Hall after being lost for almost 50 years following their removal for an extension in 1970.
Examples in the United States of Holiday's work may be seen in the sacristy of St. John's Chapel,
Groton School
Groton School (founded as Groton School for Boys) is a private college-preparatory boarding school located in Groton, Massachusetts. Ranked as one of the top five boarding high schools in the United States in Niche (2021–2022), it is affiliated ...
(Groton, Massachusetts—panels by Holiday repurposed from the School's original chapel), and in
Grace Church in New York City.
Other work and personal life
![Oak Tree House, Redington Gardens, Hampstead, March 2022](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/Oak_Tree_House%2C_Redington_Gardens%2C_Hampstead%2C_March_2022.jpg)
Holiday also created some sculpture, in 1861 producing a piece called ''Sleep'' which attracted favourable critical interest.
Holiday worked for architect
William Burges
William Burges (; 2 December 1827 – 20 April 1881) was an English architect and designer. Among the greatest of the Victorian art-architects, he sought in his work to escape from both nineteenth-century industrialisation and the Neoc ...
for a period, including providing wall and ceiling paintings for
Worcester College, Oxford
Worcester College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. The college was founded in 1714 by the benefaction of Sir Thomas Cookes, 2nd Baronet (1648–1701) of Norgrove, Worcestershire, whose coat of arms w ...
(1863–64) and furniture paintings – including ''Sleeping Beauty'' for the headboard in the bedroom – at Burges's London home,
The Tower House
The Tower House, 29 Melbury Road, is a late-Victorian townhouse in the Holland Park district of Kensington and Chelsea, London, built by the architect and designer William Burges as his home. Designed between 1875 and 1881, in the French Go ...
. The ''Sleeping Beauty'' bed is now in the collection of the
Higgins Art Gallery & Museum, Bedford. Holiday has four oil paintings in British national public collections.
In October 1864, Holiday married Catherine Raven (1866-1949) and they moved to
Bayswater
Bayswater is an area within the City of Westminster in West London. It is a built-up district with a population density of 17,500 per square kilometre, and is located between Kensington Gardens to the south, Paddington to the north-east, and ...
, London. His wife was a talented
embroiderer
Embroidery is the craft of decorating Textile, fabric or other materials using a sewing needle, needle to apply yarn, thread or yarn. Embroidery may also incorporate other materials such as pearls, beads, quills, and sequins. In modern days, emb ...
who worked for
Morris & Co. They had one daughter, Winifred.
[Short biography](_blank)
(Lewis Carroll Society).
In 1867, Holiday visited Italy for the first time and was inspired by the originality of the Renaissance artists he saw on display there. In 1871 he went to
Ceylon
Sri Lanka (, ; si, ශ්රී ලංකා, Śrī Laṅkā, translit-std=ISO (); ta, இலங்கை, Ilaṅkai, translit-std=ISO ()), formerly known as Ceylon and officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an ...
as part of the "Eclipse Expedition". His astronomical drawings were subsequently published in the national press and attracted great interest.
On his return to England in 1872, he commissioned architect
Basil Champneys
Basil Champneys (17 September 1842 – 5 April 1935) was an English architect and author whose most notable buildings include Manchester's John Rylands Library, Somerville College Library (Oxford), Newnham College, Cambridge, Lady Margaret Hall, ...
to design a new family home in Branch Hill,
Hampstead
Hampstead () is an area in London, which lies northwest of Charing Cross, and extends from Watling Street, the A5 road (Roman Watling Street) to Hampstead Heath, a large, hilly expanse of parkland. The area forms the northwest part of the Lon ...
, which was named "Oak Tree House". In 1888,
William Gladstone was a visitor.
In July 1875, Holiday was commissioned by
Lewis Carroll
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (; 27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898), better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English author, poet and mathematician. His most notable works are ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' (1865) and its sequel ...
to illustrate ''
The Hunting of the Snark
''The Hunting of the Snark'', subtitled ''An Agony in 8 Fits'', is a poem by the English writer Lewis Carroll. It is typically categorised as a nonsense poem. Written between 1874 and 1876, it borrows the setting, some creatures, and eight por ...
''. He remained a friend of the author throughout his life. Carroll died in 1898.
Holiday's illustration to the chapter ''The Banker's Fate'' might contain pictorial references to the etching ''The Image Breakers'' by
Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder
Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder, Marc Gerard and Marcus Garret (c. 1520 – c. 1590) was a Flemish painter, draughtsman, print designer and etcher who was active in his native Flanders and in England. He practised in many genres, including portrait ...
, to
William Sidney Mount
William Sidney Mount (November 26, 1807 – November 19, 1868) was a 19th-century American genre painter. Born in Setauket in 1807, Mount spent much of his life in his hometown and the adjacent village of Stony Brook, where he painted portraits, ...
's painting ''The Bone Player'', and to a photograph by
Benjamin Duchenne used for a drawing in
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended fr ...
's ''
The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals''.
From 1899, Holiday worked with
Jessie Mothersole
Jessie Mothersole (1874–1958) was an English archaeologist, artist, and author.
Early life and education
Mothersole was born in Essex in 1874 and trained at the Slade School of Fine Art in London from 1891/92 until 1896. During this time Mot ...
as studio assistant and she remained closely associated with the family until Holiday's death. In 1906 Holiday gave Mothersole a drawing of his daughter Winifred, which later was acquired by the
British Museum
The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...
.
In 1907, Holiday went to Egypt, painting a series of watercolours and illustrations on ancient Egyptian themes. These were exhibited at Walker's Gallery, London, in March 1908 jointly with Mothersole who had been working on Egyptian archaeological drawings and watercolours since 1903/4. In 1907–08, he commissioned the building of a holiday home, Betty Fold, in his favourite part of the
Lake District
The Lake District, also known as the Lakes or Lakeland, is a mountainous region in North West England. A popular holiday destination, it is famous for its lakes, forests, and mountains (or ''fells''), and its associations with William Wordswor ...
.
Between 1912 and 1919 he painted the
apse
In architecture, an apse (plural apses; from Latin 'arch, vault' from Ancient Greek 'arch'; sometimes written apsis, plural apsides) is a semicircular recess covered with a hemispherical vault or semi-dome, also known as an ''exedra''. In ...
of the east end of
St Benedict's Church at
Small Heath
Small Heath is an area in south-east Birmingham, West Midlands, England situated on and around the Coventry Road about from the city centre.
History
Small Heath, which has been settled and used since Roman times, sits on top of a small hill. ...
, Birmingham, depicting Christ in Glory with angels, and saints in arcading, below, in Byzantine style.
Holiday had been a
socialist
Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the e ...
throughout his life and, together with his wife Kate and daughter Winifred, supported the
Suffragette
A suffragette was a member of an activist women's organisation in the early 20th century who, under the banner "Votes for Women", fought for the right to vote in public elections in the United Kingdom. The term refers in particular to members ...
movement. The family were close acquaintances of
Myra Sadd Brown
Myra Eleanor Sadd Brown (3 October 1872 – 13 April 1938) was a campaigner for Women's suffrage, women's rights, an activist and internationalist. A suffragette, she became a member of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) in 1907 an ...
and
Emmeline Pankhurst
Emmeline Pankhurst ('' née'' Goulden; 15 July 1858 – 14 June 1928) was an English political activist who organised the UK suffragette movement and helped women win the right to vote. In 1999, ''Time'' named her as one of the 100 Most Impo ...
and her daughter, and had organised local suffragette meetings in the Lake District.
Holiday died on 15 April 1927 in London, two years after his wife, Kate. His nephew,
Gilbert Holiday (1879–1937), son of Sir Frederick Holiday, was also an artist who also has paintings in British collections.
See also
*
Aestheticism
Aestheticism (also the Aesthetic movement) was an art movement in the late 19th century which privileged the aesthetic value of literature, music and the arts over their socio-political functions. According to Aestheticism, art should be pro ...
*
British and Irish stained glass (1811–1918)
A revival of the art and craft of stained-glass window manufacture took place in early 19th-century Britain, beginning with an armorial window created by Thomas Willement in 1811–12. The revival led to stained-glass windows becoming such a c ...
Notes
Bibliography
* Holiday, Henry. ''Stained glass as an art'' (1896).
* Holiday, Henry.
Art and Individualism' (1903)
* Holiday, Henry. ''Reminiscences of My Life'' (Heinemann London, 1914).
* Carroll, Lewis.
' (London: MacMillan & Co., 1876).
* Various.
Famous Paintings, Volume 1' (Cassell, 1891), no. 1.
* Mackay, Angus M. ''Henry Holiday and his art''. Article fro
The Westminster Review, Volume 158(1902) pp. 391 ff.
* ''The decorative work of Mr. Henry Holiday''
Studio International, Volume 46 1909) pp. 106–115.
*
Baldry, A. L. ''Henry Holiday'' (Walker's quarterly, nos. 31–32, pub. by London: Walker's Galleries, 1930).
* ''Henry Holiday 1839–1927, exhibition catalogue'' (London: William Morris Gallery, Walthamstow, 1989).
* Wilcox, Scott & Newall, Christopher. ''Victorian landscape watercolors'' (Hudson Hills, 1992) p. 190.
*
Cohen, Morton N. & Wakeling, Edward. ''Lewis Carroll and his illustrators'' (Macmillan, London, 2003) pp. 22–27.
External links
Holiday online(ArtCyclopedia)
Paintings by Holiday(Art renewal Center museum)
The stained glass of Henry Holiday(University of St Andrews)
Paintings featuring children("Children in art history")
Study of a draped classical figure(Christie's)
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*
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Holiday, Henry
19th-century English painters
English male painters
20th-century English painters
Pre-Raphaelite painters
English illustrators
English watercolourists
British stained glass artists and manufacturers
Artists' Rifles soldiers
1839 births
1927 deaths
Lewis Carroll
Pre-Raphaelite illustrators
Pre-Raphaelite sculptors
Pre-Raphaelite stained glass artists