Christiana Herringham
Christiana Jane Herringham, Lady Herringham (née Powell; 1852–1929) was a British artist, copyist, and art patron. She is noted for her part in establishing the
Background
Christiana Jane Powell was born in Kent and was the daughter of
Interests 1880–1900
From 1880 to 1890, Herringham was a director of the Ladies Residential Chambers Co. She was one of its founders, with Agnes Garrett.[6]
Herringham encountered
Her paintings had much in common with what has been called "a late provincial renaissance of Pre-Raphaelite and Symbolist art" based in Birmingham, facets of the "Tempera Revival".[11][12] Independent of the Birmingham group were John D. Batten and John Roddam Spencer Stanhope who also revived and worked in tempera.[13]
Her father, who had passed money to his children during his lifetime, died in 1897, and Herringham became wealthy.[2] She gave money to Newnham College, Cambridge at the end of the century.[6]
Suffrage
Herringham was committed to women's suffrage from 1889. Bertha Newcombe of the Artists' Suffrage League (ASL) was a friend, and Christiana took part in her letter-writing campaign in 1908.[6][15]
Publications
The death of Jessie Boucherett in 1905, who had founded and given financial support to The Englishwoman's Review, a feminist journal, undermined a publication that had appeared for nearly 40 years, and lasted to 1910. Her will left a lump sum, which was run down.[16][17][18] In 1906 Herringham founded the Women's Tribune tabloid before she went to India. It was short-lived, lasting four months, but reported in detail on the Women's Social and Political Union. Explicitly it was the organ of the Women's Declaration Committee, associated with Clementina Black.[19][20] The publication was recreated as Women and Progress by Nora Vynne and was published until 1914.[21]
Herringham also supported the launch in 1909 of The Englishwoman by the Women's League of Suffrage Societies.[22] She published in it "Travel Sketches of Indian Women" in 1909, and "A Visit to a Purdah Hospital" in 1910.[23] It was published from January 1909 by Grant Richards, initially edited by his wife Elisina. In April 1909 Mary Lowndes took it over, as Herringham specified. It continued to 1921.[22]
Banners
Christiana Herringham made banners for suffragist groups: for ASL, and the Women Writers' Suffrage League, in particular.[6] The latter was designed by Mary Lowndes, and carried in the 1908 procession organised by the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, in which 800 banners were seen. It carried the Latin tag litera scripta manet, part of the saying vox audita perit litera scripta manet.[24] The former was for the ASL, formed in 1907, and involved in production of suffragist materials designed to bring about change. The stitching of the banner was in part the work of Herringham, and its slogan "Alliance not Defiance" implied an appeal for male assistance.[6][25]
Herringham supplied textiles and silk from India for banners: another one on which she worked, carrying the words "Post Laborum Palma", is not known to be extant. The procession in London on 13 June 1908, from the edge of the city to the
Art interests 1901–1907
Herringham was involved in founding the Society of Painters in Tempera in 1901. It had little impact on academic painters, but influenced Joseph Southall.[2] The members included Mary Sargant Florence[27] and Margaret Gere; the Society flourished to around 1909, and had around 50 members, holding exhibitions in 1901, 1905 and 1909.[28] It merged into a new Mural Decorators' Society in 1912.[27]
The
In 1907, Herringham was one of the founders of the Women's Guild of Arts.[34]
India
In 1906, the Herringhams made a trip to India.
Herringham travelled to India again in 1911, and made copies of the
The Russian-French art historian Victor Goloubew (
Later life
Herringham, however, had begun to suffer from delusions of pursuit and persecution. In 1914, she returned to the UK and was admitted to mental institutions. She spent the rest of her life in private nursing homes. She died in Sussex in 1929.[2]
Works
- Translation of Il libro dell'arte by Mary Merrifield.[2] It used the edition in Italian by Carlo and Gaetano Milanesi, and the German translation by Albert Ilg; and became the standard version in English for a generation.[41] The work influenced Marianne Stokes.[42]
- Ajanta Frescoes: Being Reproductions in Colour and Monochrome of Frescoes in Some of the Caves at Ajanta After Copies Taken in the Years 1909-1911 by Lady Herringham and Her Assistants (1915) [43]
Legacy
Wilmot Herringham left the couple's art collection, and a number of Christiana's paintings, to
Family
Christiana and Wilmot Herringham had two sons. Christopher (1882–1893) died of rheumatoid arthritis.[47][5] Geoffrey (1883–1914) was a professional soldier, killed at the Battle of Messines at the beginning of World War I.[48]
In literature
Her biographer Mary Lago suggests Christiana Herringham may have been the inspiration for Mrs Moore in E. M. Forster's 1924 novel A Passage to India. The Herringhams were family friends of the Forsters, through Forster's Aunt Laura; and Forster dined with Wilmot Herringham, William Rothenstein and Rabindranath Tagore in 1912, before his journey to India. Lago makes a case that the Adela Quested character in the novel is based on a travelling companion of the Herringhams on their 1906 voyage out.[49]
References
- ISBN 978-0-19-926169-7.
- ^ doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/64758. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- ISBN 978-0-8262-1024-1.
- ISBN 978-0-8262-1024-1.
- ^ doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/33838. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- ^ ISBN 978-1-135-43402-1.
- ISBN 978-0-8262-1024-1.
- doi:10.16995/ntn.865.
- JSTOR 41809163.
- ^ Williamson, George Charles (1900). Pietro Vannucci, called Perugino. Good Press. p. 30.
- ISBN 978-0-19-817208-6.
- JSTOR 41614460.
- ISBN 978-0-7093-0057-1.
- ISBN 978-0-387-75688-2.
- ISBN 978-0-415-23926-4.
- doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/31982. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/31905. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- ISBN 978-90-382-1340-8.
- ISBN 9780415239264.
- ISBN 978-0-252-03015-4.
- required.)
- ^ ISBN 978-0-8262-1024-1.
- ISBN 978-0-8078-4471-7.
- ^ "Banner of the Writers' Suffrage League - Lowndes, Mary and Herringham, Mrs". Google Arts & Culture.
- ^ "Selling Suffrage: Visual culture and merchandise, NGV". www.ngv.vic.gov.au.
- ISBN 978-0-8262-1024-1.
- ^ ISBN 978-1-4094-3555-6.
- JSTOR 20073402.
- ISBN 978-0-8262-1024-1.
- ISBN 978-0-8262-1024-1.
- ISBN 978-0-8262-1024-1.
- ISBN 978-0-8262-1024-1.
- JSTOR 3100631.
- ^ "Christiana Herringham (1852-1929): Biographical Introduction". www.victorianweb.org.
- ISBN 978-0-8262-1024-1.
- ISBN 978-0-8262-1024-1.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-8262-1024-1.
- ISBN 978-1-86189-318-5.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-521-44354-8.
- ^ Gupta, Rādhāprasāda (1986). Visions: Paintings and Sculptures by Somnath Hore, Ganesh Pyne, Bikash Bhattacharjee, and Jogen Chowdhury. Ladies Study Group. p. 104.
- ISBN 978-0-8262-1024-1.
- ISBN 978-1-906593-01-8.
- ^ Society, Royal India, Pakistan, and Ceylon; Herringham, Lady Christiana Jane Powell (1915). Ajanta Frescoes: Being Reproductions in Colour and Monochrome of Frescoes in Some of the Caves at Ajanta After Copies Taken in the Years 1909-1911 by Lady Herringham and Her Assistants. H. Milford, Oxford University Press.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ^ Henrietta McBurney Ryan, "Christiana Herringham and the Art Collections at Newnham College" in Prerona Prasad (ed.), We Are Here. Women in Art at Cambridge Colleges. Exhibition catalogue, Heong Gallery, Downing College, Cambridge, March–May 2020.
- ^ "Hidden histories tour - Royal Holloway, University of London". YouTube. Archived from the original on 20 December 2021. Retrieved 11 September 2020.
- ^ Michaela Jones, "Christiana Herringham and the Art Collection of Royal Holloway and Bedford New College" (unpublished PhD thesis, Royal Holloway, University of London, 2019).
- ISBN 978-0-8262-1024-1.
- ISBN 978-1-4738-5091-0.
- ISBN 978-0-8262-1024-1.
Further reading
- McNay, Anna (Autumn 2023). "Meet the collectors: Christiana Herringham". Art Quarterly. London: Art Fund. pp. 54–59.
- Jones, Michaela (2020). Christiana Herringham and the Art Collection of Royal Holloway and Bedford New College (PhD thesis). Royal Holloway, University of London. Retrieved 10 September 2023.
External links
- Works by Christiana Herringham at Open Library
- Christiana Jane Herringham (1852-1929) artist and Women’s Suffrage campaigner, exploringsurreyspast.org.uk
- Mary Lago Collection at the University of Missouri Libraries