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Sir Charles Holroyd R.E.
 Potternewton, Leeds 1861 – 1917 Weybridge
Holroyd’s etchings, though he produced some 286 plates, rarely come on to the market so that today he is relatively little known as an etcher.
It is therefore a welcome opportunity to offer this selection of seventy-eight subjects; the more so in that they come directly from the artist, descending via his wife Lady Holroyd, to their son Michael and subsequently to Michael’s godson. (Michael and his wife Freda had no children; on Michael’s death they were inherited by his widow and at Freda’s death in 1983 passed to their godson, who died in 2002; and thence to his widow.) Furthermore, they give a very good representative cross section of his œuvre, from his earliest plates through to the penultimate year of his life.
They comprise examples from two of his main series, Icarus and Monte Oliveto Maggiore as well as independent mythological and religious images, unusual themes for his time, and as the years passed his move into ‘conventional’ landscape and topographical subjects more typical of Modern British etching. They reveal his love of trees, of Italy and of the Lake District.
On leaving Leeds Grammar School, Holroyd had initially studied mining engineering at the Yorkshire College of Science, but after a year or so changed direction and moved to London in 1880 to attend the Slade, where he was taught by Alphonse Legros. When he graduated in 1884 Legros asked him to stay on as his assistant.
Legros considered the traditional journey to Italy such an important part of art training that he donated part of his income to augment the funds available at the college for traveling scholarships.
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Alphonse Legros: Portrait of Charles Holroyd, etching, c.1889 |
A travelling scholarship allowed Holroyd to spend 1889-1891 in Rome, which had a lasting effect on both his work (in its subject matter) and future life, for in Rome he met the Australian artist Fannie Featherstonehaugh Macpherson, daughter of the Premier of Victoria. She had coincidentally also trained at the Slade. They returned to England in 1891 and married.
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Portrait of Sir Charles Holroyd by Fannie Lady Holroyd. Oils, c1900-1905
Exhibited at the Royal Academy 1909.
Reproduced in Women Painters of the World
by Walter Shaw Sparrow, published 1905. |
Holroyd was a painter, etcher, author (of Michael Angelo Buonarotti, London, Duckworth 1903, published the year he was knighted) and from 1897 onwards, a museum director. That year he was appointed first Keeper of the new National Gallery of British Art, at Millbank, which became the Tate, the building having been funded by Sir George Tate and having benefitted from the bequest of his art collection.
Holroyd left the Tate in 1906 to become Director of the National Gallery. There, under his directorship notable acquisitions included The Rokeby Venus by Velasquez, Masaccio’s Virgin & Child, Raphael’s Procession to Calvary, Cranach’s Charity and Vermeer’s Young Woman seated at a Virginal.
However, his own painting, and particularly his etching, continued to engage Holroyd, but was necessarily confined to his spare time and holidays.
Elected to the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers in 1885 Holroyd exhibited new etchings every year (with only three exceptions 1888, 1890 & 1915) at the R.E. for thirty years, from 1885 through to 1916.
He also exhibited paintings, mainly in oils, at the Royal Academy from 1885 until 1917, and in 1906
exhibited two etchings, the only year he showed etchings at the R.A.
Though Holroyd was a member of the International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers, he only exhibited with them once, a painting, in 1913.
He was also a member of the Art Workers’ Guild, and elected Master for the year 1905.
The majority of Holroyd’s actual etching plates, some worked on both sides, are today housed in the Ashmolean.
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Holroyd gave each of his prints an opus number, but in five instances where he reworked a plate at a later date
he gave the later state a new opus number. Campbell Dodgson, when he compiled the catalogue of Holroyd’s etchings
for Print Collector’s Quarterly in 1923, compacted Holroyd’s numbering, including the later state of the plate with
the original one, amalgamating both under the earlier single catalogue number.
Hence the occurrence of apparent reference number discrepancies.
A paper edition of this catalogue will be published in December, price £10.
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The
Exhibition
To
view the entire Exhibition, print-by-print,
click this link and
then follow the prints through the Gallery
by using the "next print >" and "< previous
print" navigation
buttons. Alternatively, you can select an individual
print from its thumbnail or title in the list
below.
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Grinding the Axe
Original etching, before 1885 |
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A Trio
Original etching, before 1885 |
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Study of Head - Satyr
Original etching, 1885 |
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Giorgione at Asolo
Original etching, c1902 |
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The General of the Order in his Study
Original etching, 1891-92 |
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Midnight Service, Venice
Original etching, 1897-98 |
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Daedalus and Icarus
Original etching, 1894-95 |
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The Flight of Icarus – second plate
Original etching, 1901-02 |
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Icarus
Original etching, 1894-95 |
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Fall of Icarus
Original etching, 1901- 02 |
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The Death of Icarus
Original etching, 1890-01 |
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Sacred Music
Original etching, 1894-95 |
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The Adoration of the Shepherds
Original etching, 1899 - 1900 |
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Mistress
Katharine
Mary Gray Woodthorpe
Original etching, 1903-04 |
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Eve and the Serpent
Original etching, 1899 |
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“Adam and his wife hid themselves”
Original etching, 1898-99 |
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Eve finding the body of Abel
Original etching, 1900-01 |
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The Magdalen
Original etching, 1895 |
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Lady Godiva
Original etching, 1895 |
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Bathers in a Fountain, Piazza del Poplo
Original etching, 1890-91 |
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A Roman Fountain
Original etching, 1892 |
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Nymph or Pomona
Original engraving/drypoint, 1894-95 |
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Veii
Original etchings, 1897 |
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Naiad or A Summer Breeze
Original etching, 1892-1900 |
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The Dark Pool
Original etching, 1894 |
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Hamadryad
Original etching, 1907 |
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The Cave Dweller
Original drypoint, 1909 |
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Bather in a Rapid Stream
Original etching, 1912-13 |
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Nymphs by the Sea
Original etching, 1904-05 |
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Bathers 1st Plate
Original etching, 1893-94 |
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Bathers 2nd Plate
Original etching, 1907 |
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Nymphs of a Mountain Stream
Original etching & drypoint, 1908 |
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Alphonse Legros No.1
Original etching, 1895-96 |
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Roger Fry
Original etching, 1899 |
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Edmund Kerchever Chambers
Original etchings, 1900-01 |
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Michael
Original drypoint, 1910 |
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The Beggar in the
Portico
or The Philosopher
Original etching, 1912-13 |
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The Lagoon
Original etching, 1908 |
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Venice from the Giudecca
Original etching, 1905-06 |
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Canal of the Giudecca ,
with San Giorgio Maggiore
Original etching, 1905-06 |
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Calle Franchi
Original etching, 1905-06 |
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The Dogana
Original etching, 1907-08 |
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The Dogana with Smuggler
Original etching, 1907-08 |
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San Geremia
Original etching, 1899 |
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Fondamente Zorzi
and Ponte de Formager
Original etching, 1912-13 |
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Canal Grande
Original etching, 1898-99 |
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Rio San Gregorio 222
Original etching, 1905-06 |
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San Pietro in Castello
Original etching, 1901-01 |
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Santa Maria della Salute
Original etching, 1901-02 |
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The Salute Steps
Original etching, 1905-06 |
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Belluno
Original etching, 1908-09 |
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Landor’s Villa
Original etching, 1911-12 |
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Siena, the city beloved of Mary
Original etching1902-03 |
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In the Ghetto, Rome
Original etching, 1896-97 |
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Ponte Nomentano
Original etching, 1904 |
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Storm Cloud on the Campagna
Original etching, 1896-97 |
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Torre degli Schiavi
Original etching, 1895-96 |
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Subiaco in the Sabines
Original etching, 1913-14 |
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Carcassonne
Original etching, 1906 |
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Torre de la Zeo, Zaragoza
Original etching, 1906 |
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Alcantara Bridge, Toledo
Original etching, 1906 |
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The Acropolis
Original etching, 1910-11 |
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The Parthenon
Original etching, 1910-11 |
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The Parthenon
Original etching, 1910-11 |
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Night
Original drypoint, 1898 |
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La Bella Romana
Original etching and drypoint, 1891 |
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Landscape with a dark tree –
Wickersley , Yorkshire
Original etching, 1895-96 |
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Trees at Hampstead
Original etching, 1893 |
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A Thames Backwater near Laleham
Original etching, 1904 |
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Old Barn, Great Fosters
Original etching, 1896 |
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The Shadow of the Yews
Original etching, 1903 |
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Borrowdale Yews
Original etching, 1903 |
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Wordsworth’s Yews
Original etching, 1908 |
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View from the top of Glaramara
Original etching, 1907 |
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Langdale Pikes
Original etching, 1905-06 |
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Dungeon Ghyll
Original etching, 1906 |
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Stickle Ghyll
Original etching, 1906 |
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Great Gable
Original etching, 1912 |
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Lingmoor Fell
Original etching, 1906 |
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Angle Tarn
Original etching, 1910 |
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Black Mell Pot
Original etching, 1906-07 |
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Pine Trees at Farringford
Original etching, 1900-01 |
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The Edge of the Wood
Original etching, 1915-16 |
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