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Helen Allingham R.W.S. (1848-1926) Helen Mary Elizabeth Paterson arrived in this world on the 26th of September, 1848 in the small village of Swadlincote, near Burton on Trent in Derbyshire, England. She was the eldest of seven children born to Alexander Henry Paterson, a rural physician, and Mary Chance Herford, daughter of a Manchester wine merchant. Within her first year of her life, the Patersons moved to Altrincham, Cheshire where Helen's father set up a medical practice and the young family grew and prospered. It was during these years that young Helen's interest and talent in art blossomed, inspired by her maternal grandmother Sarah Smith Herford, and especially her aunt Laura Herford, both accomplished artists of their day.
The famed Royal Academy School attracted many visiting masters, and young Helen was profoundly influenced by the teachings of Frederick Walker, Sir Frederick Leighton, and Sir John Everett Millais, co-founder of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. Tuition at the Royal Academy was free, but Helen still needed income to pay for her accommodations and expenses. She sought work with engraving firms, sketching figures and scenes in black & white, and in 1869 was commissioned by the Once A Week magazine for four full-page illustrations. Her work was well received, leading to more commissions by other periodicals and children's books while she continued her schooling three days a week. In 1870 Helen was hired as one of the founding staff members - and only woman - on The Graphic, one of a new breed of large-scale, high quality illustrated weekly magazines. Commissions to illustrate books and periodicals continued to pour in and by 1872 Helen decided to cease her schooling at the Academy and work as a commercial artist. Her prestigious commissions included illustrations for Thomas Harding's new novel, Far From the Madding Crowd, and for a series of girl's novels by Juliana Ewing including Six to Sixteen and A Flat Iron for a Farthing. She enrolled for evening classes at the Slade School and worked alongside Kate Greenaway, with whom she became a life long friend. Helen's work was now bringing her into contact with many of London's prominent writers and artists, and inevitably her path crossed that of the renowned Irish poet and editor of Fraser's Magazine, William Allingham. They married on August 22nd, 1874.
Marriage brought children for Helen but did not hinder her career in art. Her first son, born in November 1875, was named Gerald Carlyle in honor of the great sage. A daughter christened Eva Margaret and known as "Evey" followed in February, 1877, and finally Henry William arrived in 1882. During the seven years the Allinghams lived in London, Helen exhibited more than a hundred watercolours, some depicting her own children as models. Her early work tended to feature large figures in a landscape, but later, influenced by their holidays in the country, her style shifted more to smaller figures with emphasis on the rural scene. With the death of their dear friend Carlyle in 1881, the family decided to leave London and move to a permanent home in a small hamlet called Sandhills near Witley in Surrey. It was here that Helen developed her fame and reputation for painting cottages.
The years at Sandhills were some of the happiest and most prolific for Helen and William. The peaceful surroundings were quite conducive to William's poetry and Helen's painting, and she did many watercolours of the countryside, flower gardens, her children and, most of all, the numerous old picturesque country cottages that surrounded them. Helen's cottage paintings became very popular back in London and in 1886 she was invited to hold a one-woman exhibition titled Surrey Cottages by the Fine Art Society in London. Her devotion to cottages, however, was not merely for the sentimental pleasure of an industrialized London society. Railway lines were cutting a swathe through the countryside, bringing a swelling middle class seeking new comfortable country homes. The old thatched cottages that stood for hundreds of years were now being modernized or even demolished at a rapid pace. Helen set out to immortalize these ancient bastions, capturing every detail in extraordinary accuracy with a warm, sympathetic style unmatched by other artists of the time. She traveled the countryside, staying just ahead of the builders and wrecking balls, painting outdoors with a pallette of just nine colors. While she would add figures and occasionally reverse modernization by restoring thatch or window latticework, she was careful to keep idealization to a minimum. To this day her works are studied by architects to better understand the construction techniques of a lost time. By 1888 William's health was beginning to fail and the couple decided to move back to London to be near their many friends and provide for their children's education. They took up residence in Hampstead, but Helen continued her excursions back to Surrey and Kent by train to paint. In November, 1889 William died, leaving Helen with a young family and very little money. She was now dependent once again on her painting skills and applied herself prolifically, often fetching hefty sums for her ever popular cottage pictures. In 1890 the Royal Society of Watercolours finally opened their membership to women, and Helen had the honor of being the first elected into the Society.
Helen continued to paint and exhibit her work right up to the end of her life. On September 28th, 1926, Helen Allingham died of a sudden illness while visiting an old friend at Valewood House in Haslemere, just a few miles from her old country home in Sandhills. She was 78 years old. A more detailed account of Helen Allingham's life and works can be found in Ina Taylor's wonderful biography |
