John Collier (British, 1850-1934)
John Collier was born in London the son of a judge, Sir Robert Collier. He studied sat Slade School of Art under Sir Edward Poynter then later in Paris with J.P. Laurens in Munich, and was a pupil of Alma-Tadema. His aristocratic background allowed him introductions to several important artists of the time such as Lawrence Alma-Tadema and John Everett Millais and he became a popular portrait painter in Victorian and Edwardian England. He also produced narrative works and contributed to exhibits at the Royal Academy. Collier is known for his dramatic, theatrical style of paintings of classical subjects. In true romantic tradition, his favor of using beautiful women of legend, myth, literature and lore as his primary subjects.
John Collier was born in London the son of a judge, Sir Robert Collier. He studied sat Slade School of Art under Sir Edward Poynter then later in Paris with J.P. Laurens in Munich, and was a pupil of Alma-Tadema. His aristocratic background allowed him introductions to several important artists of the time such as Lawrence Alma-Tadema and John Everett Millais and he became a popular portrait painter in Victorian and Edwardian England. He also produced narrative works and contributed to exhibits at the Royal Academy. Collier is known for his dramatic, theatrical style of paintings of classical subjects. In true romantic tradition, his favor of using beautiful women of legend, myth, literature and lore as his primary subjects.
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Lady Godiva - John Collier
Biography
Museums: John Collier may be found at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the National Portrait Gallery, London and the Tate Gallery, London.Hon John Collier came from a gifted and prosperous family. His grandfather, also named John Collier, was a Quaker merchandiser who was a Member of Parliament. His father was as well a Member of Parliament, Attorney General and also for several years a regular judge of the Privy Council that was founded the first Lord Monkswell. Collier's father was in addition a part of the Royal Society of British Artists. John Collier's older brother, the second Lord Monkswell, had been Under-Secretary of State for War and Chairman to the London County Council.
Collier had been likewise intimately affiliated with a family of arch-scientist of later Victorian England, the Rt Hon Professor Thomas Henry Huxley, President of the Royal Society. Collier wed two of Professor Huxley's daughters and was said to be "on terms of intimate friendship" with the son, the author Leonard Huxley.
Collier's was married for the first time to first spouse Marian Huxley in 1879. She became an artist who was educated, similar to her husband, at the Slade School, and displayed at the Royal Academy along with assorted galleries. Following the birth of their sole infant, a daughter, she sustained serious post-natal depression and was admitted to a hospital in Paris for treatment where she caught pneumonia and passed away in 1887.
Shortly after in 1889, Collier wed Marian's junior sister Ethel Huxley. In England the Deceased Wife's Sister's Marriage Act 1907 declared that such a wedding was not allowed therefore the ceremony too place in the country of in Norway. With his second wife Ethel Huxley, Collier had one daughter and one son. The son was Sir Laurence Collier who became the British Ambassador to Norway 1941-51. Collier's daughter by his previous marriage, Joyce, was a portrait miniaturist and a member of the Royal Society of Miniature Painters.
Sleeping Beauty - John Collier
Hon John Collier Selected Paintings
- A Devonshire Orchard- Circe 1885
- Clytemnestra 1882
- Clytemnestra 1914
- Ellen Terry as Lucy Ashton
- Guinevere's Maying
- Hetty Sorrell
- Horace and Lydia Study
- In the Forest of Arden 1892
- In the Venusburg Tannhäuser 1901
- Lady Godiva circa 1898
- Lady Halle 1895
- Lilith 1887
- Pope Urban VI 1896
- Portrait of the Artist's Daughter 1929
- Priestess of Delphi 1891
- Sentence of Death 1908
- Shopping for Silks
- Sleeping Beauty
- Spring
- Tannhauser in the Venusberg
- The Artist's Wife 1880
- The Confession 1902
- The Death of Albine 1895
- The Grand Lady 1920
- The Laboratory
- The Land Baby 1909
- The Last Voyage of Henry Hudson 1881
- The Pharaoh's Handmaidens 1883
- The Plague 1902
- The Priestess of Bacchus
- The Prodigal Daughter 1903
- The Water Nymph 1923
- The White Devil 1909
- Water Baby 1890
Priestess of Delphi - John Collier
Queen Guinevres Maying - John Collier
Horace and Lydia - John Collier
Lilith - John Collier
The Land Baby - John Collier
The Water Nymph - John Collier
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papawu wrote...
Amazing and sensual works. But, I can't help feeling that their is a disturbing lack of emotion in his subjects. I don't know...
Posted April 09, 2009
by artmary
Hon John Maler Collier January 27, 1850-April 11, 1934 - British author and painter in the Pre-Raphaelite manner. He was among the most famous po... (more)
