Marian Collier (née Huxley) by John CollierFXD

Marian "Mady" Collier ( née Marian Huxley; 1859–1887) also spelled as Marion Huxley, was a British 19th-century painter and is associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

Biography

Marian Huxley was born in 1859 in London, to father

Thomas Henry Huxley Thomas Henry Huxley (4 May 1825 – 29 June 1895) was an English biologist and anthropologist specialising in comparative anatomy. He has become known as "Darwin's Bulldog" for his advocacy of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. The stori ...

and mother Henrietta Anne Heathorn. She had seven siblings, including her brother Leonard Huxley. She studied painting at the

Slade School of Fine Art The UCL Slade School of Fine Art (informally The Slade) is the art school of University College London (UCL) and is based in London, England. It has been ranked as the UK's top art and design educational institution. The school is organised as ...

in London. Her work was shown at the Royal Academy of Arts and 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 prov ...

. On June 30, 1879, Huxley married the British writer and portrait painter, John Collier, also a Slade graduate. Together they had a daughter named Joyce, their only child in 1884. After the birth of Joyce, Huxley suffered from "nervous hysteria" (possibly

postpartum depression Postpartum depression (PPD), also called postnatal depression, is a type of mood disorder associated with childbirth, which can affect both sexes. Symptoms may include extreme sadness, low energy, anxiety, crying episodes, irritability, and cha ...

) and in November 1887 she was taken to Paris for treatment with Jean-Martin Charcot, however, she contracted

pneumonia Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung primarily affecting the small air sacs known as alveoli. Symptoms typically include some combination of productive or dry cough, chest pain, fever, and difficulty breathing. The severi ...

and died in December 1887. She had erratic behavior and possibly mental illness, which appeared to increase in symptoms before she died. After Marion died, John Collier married her younger sister Emma Huxley in 1889 in Norway. Collier's work can be found in museum collections, including at the National Portrait Gallery in London, and the

Science Museum A science museum is a museum devoted primarily to science. Older science museums tended to concentrate on static displays of objects related to natural history, paleontology, geology, industry and industrial machinery, etc. Modern trends in ...

in London.

References

1859 births 1887 deaths 19th-century English painters 19th-century English women artists Alumni of the Slade School of Fine Art Artists from London British portrait painters English women painters

Marian Marian may refer to: People * Mari people, a Finno-Ugric ethnic group in Russia * Marian (given name), a list of people with the given name * Marian (surname), a list of people so named Places * Marian, Iran (disambiguation) * Marian, Queenslan ...

Pre-Raphaelite painters {{UK-artist-stub