Reginald Hallward: an Artist's Life (09/07/2021 B) Fri, 9Th Jul 2021 Viewing: Viewing by Appointment Only

Reginald Hallward: An Artist's Life (09/07/2021 B) Fri, 9th Jul 2021 Viewing: Viewing by appointment only. Sat 3 July, 11am to 4.30pm Mon 5 July, 10am to 5pm Tue 6 July, 10am to 5pm Wed 7 July, 10am to 5pm Please contact the Department to book an appointment. Lot 150 Estimate: £200 - £300 + Fees REGINALD F. HALLWARD (BRITISH 1858-1948) Property from the Estate of the Artist REGINALD F. HALLWARD (BRITISH 1858-1948) Requiem ink on scratchboard 25.5 x 36 cm (10 x 14 1/8 in) The artist's use of scratchwork in the present lot and lot 152 reflects his interest in illustration for which the medium was commonly used at the time. Hallward was a prolific artist, widely known for his romantic landscapes that evoke a mythic past, who was also in demand for stained glass windows and lattery for his commemorative sculptures. He trained first at the Slade and the Royal College of Art, and then in the late 1880s with the leading Arts and Crafts stained-glass practitioner Christopher Whall at his studio in Dorking. Hallward was friends with Oscar Wilde - Basil Hallward in Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray was very likely named after him – and he married the painter, illustrator and author Adeleide Bloxham (1861-1925) in 1887. He exhibited his work widely: at the Royal Academy, the New English Art Club and the Royal Society of British Artists. Before the First World War he was represented by the influential Dowdeswell Gallery, and also showed at the Rowley Gallery. He occasionally collaborated with Adeleide, they both wrote poetry and prose, and in the early 1900s he founded the Woodlands Press at Shorne in Kent (lot 157). There he crossed paths with fellow artist and publisher James Guthrie (1874-1952), who became a close friend. Hallward also worked in clay, designing and producing highly decorated ceramics with Adelaide and their daughter Patience (lots 162 & 163). Following the death of his wife in 1925, Hallward moved with Patience (1892-1981) to live in Wales, painting the mountainous wilds of Merioneth and Pembrokeshire (lot 159). Hallward’s style was conditioned in part by the lingering influence of the Pre-Raphaelites and their respect for nature, and further informed by the underlying literary foundations of Symbolism. Graves bordered by cypresses (lot 151), suggests his familiarity with developments on the Continent, and the work of Swiss painter Arnold Böcklin in particular; closer to home The high trees (lot 153), celebrates an Arcadian pastoral tradition that looks back to the rustic charm of Samuel Palmer; Wings of a dove (lot 155), offers a prescient motif in the build up to the First World War. Hallward’s mastery of a diverse range of techniques (lots 150 & 152) chimed with the rise of the Arts and Crafts movement and its championing of a multidisciplinary approach to art and decoration as espoused by William Morris. The Victorian desire to instruct and edify also informed Hallward’s aesthetic, whether through the depiction of rolling hills or the production of a cycle of stained-glass windows. It was a moral imperative that suited the wider ambitions of the day to improve and extend Britain’s sphere of influence. But it also reflected the artist’s own Christian faith, the presence of the supernatural clearly suggested in the panoramic vistas that he composed, God’s own views of great canopies of trees stretching to the horizon that feature in his compositions, and the sense of the sublime evoked by vast landscapes punctuated by deep ravines, gushing waterfalls and swelling rivers. Although Hallward’s aesthetic fell out of step with contemporary events, the romantic often medievalising manner of his work at odds with the emergence of the avantgarde in the early years of the twentieth century, in the wake of the First World War his style that leant itself to the production of memorials. As a consequence his skills as stained-glassmaker and designer were much sought after. He worked with the Imperial War Graves Commission to produce a series of tablets to honour the fallen in cathedrals and churches across England, France and Canada, including in Amiens, Rouen and Notre Dame in Paris. He completed a range of commemorative stained glass window cycles, including for the American Cemetry in Suresnes, outside Paris, and for the memorial screen at St Matthew’s Church, Ealing, and designed the war memorial cross at St Peter and St Pauls, at Shorne in Kent, to name but a very few of the multiplicity of post-War endeavours he embarked upon..

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