Henry Marriott Paget: List of Known Paintings
UPDATED: September 2019 with further information on the Godsell portraits. Thanks are due to the two people who got in touch with me with information on the paintings. They wish to remain anonymous but they know who they are!
The paintings listed below are the ones I know about. They are in date order; with some that I haven’t been able to date listed at the end. I’ve tried to give additional information where I know it – details of the subject or the sitter; where exhibited; comments at the time; where it is now etc.
Henry usually signed his paintings or used the monogram ‘hmp’. Sometimes he put the date on them as well; where he did not do so I have, in general, assumed that they were painted shortly before they were first exhibited.
1874 Market Day.
Exhibited Royal Society of Arts
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1879 Enid and Geraint. Oil
Exhibited Royal Academy and
The Correspondence of Samuel
Enid and Geraint, and Henry too, got a good review
in Art Journal volume 41 1879 p117 in its article on that year’s RA
exhibition. Henry was described as “a rising young artist” whose
It would be good, therefore, to see a reproduction of Enid and Geraint on the web; but I couldn’t find one.
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1879 Jeannette. A Study
Exhbited Royal Albert Hall.
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1879 Pluto and Prosperpine. Watercolour.
Exhibited Royal Albert Hall.
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1879 Macbeth and the Murderers. Watercolour.
Exhibited Royal Albert Hall.
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1879 Sintram. A watercolour sketch
Exhibited
This is another literary subject, though it wasn’t
one I’d ever heard of. Sintram und seine Gefährten was written by
Friedrich Heinrich Karl de la Motte Fouqué (1777-1843) and first translated in
1820 by Julius C Hare, as Sintram and His Companions. Looking through the
British Library catalogue I noticed a new translation published in
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1880 Gúdrandr Vigfússon (1828-89).
Exhibited 1888 Royal Society of Arts
I think that Henry did two portraits of Vigfússon. This must be the “fine oil sketch” that Frederick York Powell told a friend he’d asked Henry to do. It’s now in the Bodleian Library and you can see it on the web at //artuk.org. See 1888 for the second, more finished, portrait.
Frederick York Powell: A Life and a Selection
from his Letters and Occasional Writings.
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1881 W H Rickatson Esq
Exhibited
It was mentioned in Tinsley’s Magazine volume 29 July-December 1881 p39 but the reviewer couldn’t get a good look at it, it was placed too high up the wall.
The sitter is wrongly entered as “H W Rickatson” in the RA’s list of exhibitors to 1904, so it’s not surprising that I couldn’t identify an H W Rickatson when I searched the web for information on him. Then I found the portrait referred to in a contemporary review as “W H”. There’s a probate registry entry for a William Henry Rickatson of Elm Lodge Golder’s Green and I think he is the subject of this portrait.
William Henry Rickatson was a businessman dealing
in leather goods. He left personal estate of £63000-odd at his death in 1914.
Three of his four executors were named ‘Rickatson’; one – Jessie Victoria – was
his sister, she was living with him at Elm Lodge on census day 1911. I assume
the other two Rickatson executors were his brothers; and that all three shared
his fortune as income from a trust fund. One of the other two was Robert
Octavius Rickatson, described as an “artist”. There’s not much on the web about
him though you can see several pictures by him via google. His dates were
1856-1941 and in The Studio volume 5 1895 p32 it was mentioned that he
had trained at the
Sources for W H Rickatson: 1911 census, probate registry entries 1914; London Gazette 27 January 1942 p476 notice under the Trustee Act 1925.
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1881 Buondelmonti’s Bride
Exhibited Royal Academy and
This is an obscure one! Even Henry thought so –
when he sent the painting to be exhibited he attached a long explanation of
what was going on in it. The story is from the Florentine Annals. I got the
gist of the plot from a cleaned-up retelling of it published in Edinburgh
Literary Journal 1830 pp204-05: Buondelmonti agrees to marry a particular
woman in order to stop the two families feuding. He runs off and marries
someone else. He’s murdered by his fiancée’s relations and his runaway bride is
paraded through
Henry exhibited Buondelmonti’s Bride more than any
other painting; I interpret this as meaning he was finding it hard to sell. I
certainly wouldn’t want such a subject on my drawing-room wall; even though you
can’t see much blood. At www.gettyimages.co.uk
you can see a black and white version of it, reproduced from The Graphic
volume 24 number 617 issue of 24 September 1881. In the
See wikipedia and //referenceworks.brillonline.com for a short introduction to the Annales fiorentini. Did Henry read German? The Annales were written in Latin. Translations into German were published in 1868 and 1880; but there was no translation into English before 1894.
The reviews: Tinsley’s Magazine volume 29,
July-December 1881 p39: Young Art at the
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1882 Odysseus
Exhibited Grosvenor Galleries. Exhibited 1883
This must be the painting referred to by Yeats
years afterwards as having the title Ulysses – perhaps Yeats had got James
Joyce on the brain. In his The Trembling Veil Yeats described the painting: “a
big picture painted in his student days of Ulysses sailing home from the
Phaeacian court, an orange and a skin of wine at his side, blue mountains
towering behind”. Yeats said that in the late 1880s it was hanging in the hall
of the Pagets’ house in
The Yeats’ source:
The Trembling Veil, written in 1922 – that is, 30
years or m after the events. I read it in The Autobiography of W B Yeats
published
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1882
Exhibited Grosvenor Galleries.
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1882 Mornings Greetings
Exhibited Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts.
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1883 St Valentine’s Morn
Exhibited
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1883 Far Away Thoughts
Exhibited
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1884 Circe. Study for the Final Painting.
Exhibited Fine Art Society. Confirmation that it’s not the final painting: Times 21 April 1884 p7.
1884 Circe. Final work. Oil. Dated.
Exhibited
The final painting is now at
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1885 Rev Canon Henry P Liddon
Lewis Carroll and his Illustrators by Morton Norton Cohen and Edward Wakeling 2003 p239 for the date; quoting Dodgson’s published Diaries pp435-36. Exhibited 1886 Royal Academy where it caught the eye of the reviewer assessing the RA spring show for The Art Journal magazine; as “a good likeness” in the show’s Gallery II. At archive.org, The Art Journal new series 1886 p184, p187.
See his wikipedia entry for Henry Parry Liddon (1829-90), theologian and friend of Lewis Carroll.
This turned out to be a very important commission for Henry Paget. As a result of it, he was asked to do several more portraits of Oxford dons; and one of Canon Liddon’s sister.
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1885 Rev J Franck Bright, Master of University College Oxford
Exhibited Royal Academy.
There’s a wiki for James Franck Bright 1832-1920, teacher and historian. After teaching at Marlborough College, he was appointed history tutor at Balliol College Oxford in 1872. He rose rapidly up the University hierarchy: dean of University College 1874, Master of University College 1881-1906. He allowed the University’s women students into his lectures.
See archive.org for Life and Letters of Henry Parry Liddon edited by John Octavius Johnston. Longmans Green and Co 1904: on p349 James Franck Bright is mentioned as an acquaintance of Liddon.
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1885 Orlando’s Adventure with the Fairy Morgana.
Exhibited Royal Academy. Exhibited 1888 Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts. ?Exhibited 1967 Bedford Park.
Italian poetry is not my strong point so I’ve got confused as to Henry’s inspiration for this work: it’s either Orlando Furioso by Ariosto 1516 et seq, or Orlando Innamorato by ?Berni.
Artists and Architecture of Bedford Park 1875-1900 catalogue of an exhibition held June 1967. Published by the Art Committee of Bedford Park 1967. On p32 of this work there’s a quote from Henry’s long description of what’s going on in it: Orlando has gone in search of his friends captured by Morgana. He finds them trapped in a crystal rock, being sung to by fairies who say that anyone trying to vanquish Morgana has to grab her by her hair. I presume from this that the painting was in the 1967 exhibition.
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1886 companion portraits of Frederick York Powell and his wife Florence
The portrait of Florence was exhibited at the Royal Academy as Mrs York Powell. .
The portrait of Frederick was reproduced as the frontispiece of Volume 2 of amemoir of York Powell: Frederick York Powell: A Life and a Selection from his Letters and Occasional Writings. Oxford: Clarendon Press 1906. Edited by York Powell’s friend Oliver Elton. The portrait is signed and dated top right. Unless it was the anonymous portrait exhibited in 1886 and listed immediately below, it has not been exhibited. There’s a rather muddy reproduction of it at //search.proquest.com p181 of The Bookman issue January 1907.
Frederick York Powell was one of Henry’s closest friends. There’s more on him and Florence in my files on Henry and Henrietta as artists, and on their friends.
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1886 Portrait; sitter anonymous
Exhibited Manchester City Art Gallery.
Was this the portrait of Frederick York Powell?
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1886 Portrait of a Lady
Exhibited Royal Academy where the Times 8 May 1886 p8 was rather sniffy about it. The Times’ reviewer bracketed it with a painting by Arthur Cope and described both as looking “very ordinary” when compared to the nearby portrait “Miss Grey” by William Carter.
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1886 Mrs Poole King
Exhibited Royal Academy.
Annie Poole King was Rev Henry Parry Liddon’s sister. She married Richard Jenkins Poole King of the Bristol-based ship-owning family in 1852. After his death in 1874 she moved to Standish House in Gloucestershire; and in 1897 moved from there to Newark Park Wiltshire. I couldn’t find a death registration for her.
Sources: freebmd, Morning Chronicle 17 July 1852 p16, probate registry entry 1874, wikipedia on Standish Hospital and Newark Park. For the relationship, see archive.org for Life and Letters of Henry Parry Liddon edited by John Octavius Johnston. Longmans Green and Co 1904: p176, p384.
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1886 Thomas Godsell
Dated. Not exhibited as far as I know.
?1886 Mary Godsell
Not dated. Exhibited as Mrs Godsell, Royal Academy 1888.
Presumably the two Godsell paintings were companion pieces. However, only one of the sitters was alive when Henry painted them: Thomas Godsell had died in 1885. His is the first of several paintings that Henry did to commemorate people who were dead.
Thomas Godsell owned a big brewing and milling business based at Salmon’s Mill, Painswick in Gloucestershire. He had been born in Moretonhampstead; his wife Mary (née Pool) was from Stonehouse, also in Gloucestershire. Henry’s father was from Gloucestershire too; so it’s just possible that the Godsells were friends or even relatives of the Paget family, and that’s how Henry got the commission.
Sources for both Godsells: my anonymous contacts of August 2019; freebmd; census 1881; probate registry entries 1885, 1905.
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1887 Portrait Group
Exhibited Royal Academy. Exhibited 1888 Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts.
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By 1888 William Prout MD. Oil.
Henry painted two copies of this work; both in their turn described as “after” an original by John Hayes. One is in the Talbot Rice Gallery University of Edinburgh, accession number EU0060, donated by “TJP and EP 1902”. The other is at the Royal College of Physicians London, accession number X206; given to the College by Rev T J Prout in 1888. On the web at //artuk.org
Henry’s sitter had been dead for many years. Prout (1785-1850), a physician by training, is better known for his two papers (published 1815 and 1816) attempting to formulate a theory about atomic weight.
There’s a biography: William Prout: Early 19th Century Physician and Chemist by L Rosenfeld 2003.
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1888 A Scene from Dr Todhunter’s Play ‘Helena in Troas’.
Exhibited Royal Academy. Exhibited 1888 Walker Art Gallery Liverpool.
There were six performances of Todhunter’s Helena in Troas, in May 1886; at Hengler’s Circus which had been converted to be as much like an ancient Greek theatre as possible. Henry did not having anything to do with the redesign of the Circus. I think he was just cashing in on the amount of publicity the production was getting – the Times described the performances as “much-talked-of” and the Prince of Wales agreed to go to the first performance.
Times 5 May 1886 p13; 14 May 1886 p12; 18 May 1886 p9.
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1888 Gúdrandr Vigfússon (1828-89). Oil. Dated 1888; H M Paget top left.
A portrait of Vigfússon by Henry was exhibited as a work-in-progress in 1888 at the Royal Society of British Artists; though it might have been the sketch Henry did in 1880 rather than the 1888 painting. A finished portrait of Vigfússon was exhibited 1889 Paris Salon and 1890 Royal Academy. Now in the Faculty of English Language and Literature, University of Oxford, accession number PCF1.
Vigfússon and Frederick York Powell collaborated for many years on a series of translations of Icelandic sagas. In 1878 they began work on a history of Iceland’s literature, which I think was left unfinished at Vigfússon’s death. I suppose this finished portrait was also commissioned by Powell but it may have been Henry’s own decision to do a second portrait, finished to the standard required by the Paris Salon and RA.
Writing to his friend W P Ker, York Powell makes one of several references I found that show how quickly Henry worked, and how focused he was despite all that was going on around him: Powell describes Henry as working on the 1888 portrait of Vigfússon. It had taken Henry “two afternoons...painting swiftly and hard all the while with the painters’ inspiration on him, and Paget’s wife working children’s clothes and talking now and then, and the children running in and out of the room”. The painting’s subject, meanwhile, was not sitting for Henry but working at a table with York Powell on one of their translations.
Frederick York Powell: A Life and a Selection from his Letters and Occasional Writings. Oxford: Clarendon Press 1906. Edited by Oliver Elton. Especially Volume 1 p96 letter to W P Ker written Christ Church Oxford 2 February 1889; and Volume 2 p349.
The Royal Society of British Artists 1824-1893 compiled by Jane Johnson. Antique Collectors’ Club Research Project. First printed 1975; V&A’s copy is the reprint of 1993: p351 entry for Henry Marriott Paget, first elected a member in 1888.
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1888 Winifred Emery
Exhibited Walker Art Gallery Liverpool. Exhibited 1889 Royal Academy where it and several other such were damned by the Times’ reviewer with faint praise, as of “more than moderate excellence”. Exhibited 1890 Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts and Royal Society of Arts Birmingham.
Winifred Emery was the professional name of the Pagets’ sister-in-law Maud Isabel Emery (1861-1924), actress and actor-manager. In the mid-1880s she was a member of Henry Irving’s company as understudy to Ellen Terry. I think this is a wedding portrait and might even have been a wedding present from the Pagets: Maud Isabel married actor Cyril Maude in 1888. In 1892 Winifred Emery created the role of Lady Windermere in Oscar Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan; and in the 1900s she played leading roles opposite Herbert Beerbohm Tree in his theatre company. She continued to act until the 1920s.
Sources:
Times 6 January 1889 p17. For Winifred Emery: census 1871; wikipedia and ODNB volume 18 pp401-02 which is illustrated (I think) by the portrait of her done by Sickert.
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1889 William Butler Yeats. Oil.
Exhibited 1965 Ulster Museum. It’s now in the Ulster Museum as part of its Belfast Fine Art Collection.
There’s a very specific date for this painting: the A W B Yeats Chronology by J Kelly 2003 p16 states that Henry painted it – apparently from start to finish - on Saturday 6 April 1899. W B’s father John was also doing a portrait of him at the time. Perhaps both artists – who were great friends – were working in the same room together that day. Portraits were all in a day’s work for W B Yeats: according to William H O’Donnell there are 138 of them! Including 27 studio portraits. See Yeats Annual number 3: pp81-103: Portraits of W B Yeats: This Picture in the Mind’s Eye.
Times 8 July 1965 p17: Henry’s portrait was included in an exhibition of 250 portraits of famous Irish people, at the Ulster Museum.
Yeats: Folklore and Occultism by Frank Kinahan 1988 pxx shows a reproduction of it.
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1890 John O’Leary. Oil
Exhibited 1999 Dublin. Now at Crawford Art Gallery, Cork, Ireland. Painting had been bought for the Irish national collection by 1936.
See wikipedia for some basic information on John O’Leary (1830-1907), whose career as an Irish separatist republican began in 1848. He was a friend of W B Yeats – see www.historyireland.com for an article posted 2007: Yeats, O’Leary and ‘Romantic Ireland’. Yeat’s poem September 1913 was a memorial to O’Leary and a passing era.
75 Years of Giving: the Friends of the National Collections of Ireland published 1999 Dublin by the R H A Gallagher Gallery Dublin. This was the catalogue of a 75th anniversary exhibition at various galleries in Dublin: p102.
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1894 A Boxing Contest
Exhibited Royal Academy.
Henry’s entry in Who Was Who volume 3 1929-40 p1037 says he was a keen boxer himself.
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Between 1894 and 1908
Rev George William Kitchin, dean of Durham
Not exhibited as far as I’m aware. Now in the Non-Collegiate Building Library University of Oxford.
George Kitchin (1827-1912) was a friend of Charles Dodgson – Lewis Carroll. After a glittering career at Oxford University he was made dean of Winchester Cathedral in 1883. He was appointed dean of Durham Cathedral in 1894; the job included being de facto chancellor of Durham University. The separate job of chancellor of Durham University was created in 1908 and Kitchin held that post until his death. He’s in ODNB.
Henry probably got this commission through Frederick York Powell – Kitchin had helped Powell find a place at Christ Church, when he started at Oxford University.
Frederick York Powell: A Life and a Selection from his Letters and Occasional Writings. Oxford: Clarendon Press 1906. Edited by Oliver Elton who is a friend of Powell: volume 1 p14.
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1899 Portrait of Dr Wormell
This portrait was commissioned by the Central Foundation Schools to mark Wormell’s retirement as its headmaster in 1897; he had worked at the school from 1866, the year it was founded. Henry was chosen for the commission because he was an ex-pupil. The portrait was presented to Wormell during the 1899 prize-giving ceremony. As well as teaching at the school Richard Wormell (1838-1914) published books on a range of sciences including thermodynamics and pure and applied maths.
Sources: www.centralfoundationboys.co.uk, wikipedia, Times 21 July 1899 p15.
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1899? 1900? Boer War – Removing the Wounded
Now in the Wellcome Collection, number 225181. Signed bottom left with monogram “HMP”. You can see it at //wellcomecollection.org/works/xb2yeu23 where it is described as a drawing with white heightening in watercolour.
One thing that I can say about this work is that it was not done on the spot. Artists and Illustrators of the Anglo-Boer War by Ryno Greenwall. Fernwood Press 1922 gives details of all the illustrators who were sent to cover the war in South Africa. There’s no entry for Henry in the book.
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?1901 or 1902
Professor Samuel James MacMillan (1842-1900). Oil.
Now at Queen’s University Belfast, accession number QUB 60. MacMillan was professor of history and english literature at the university from 1892 to 1900.
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1903 Mrs Hugh Fairfax Cholmeley
Exhibited 1906 Royal Academy.
This is a wedding portrait, commissioned by the Pagets’ friend Hugh Fairfax-Cholmeley. Hugh married Alice Jane Moverley (1884- 1953) in 1903. There’s more on the Fairfax-Cholmeleys in my file on the Pagets ‘friends’.
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1905 Dick Swiveller and the Marchioness
Exhibited Royal Academy.
Almost any Victorian viewer would have known who these two people were but I had to find them in wikipedia. I’m not keen on Dickens. They are two of the less unsavoury characters in Charles Dickens’ The Old Curiosity Shop, published in book form in 1841 though thought to be set in the 1820s.
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1908 Mrs Briault
Exhibited Royal Academy.
I’m not sure this is the correct identification but I suggest this sitter might be Ellen Ann Briault of 13 Ambrose Avenue, Golder’s Green, who died in January 1921 (source: probate registry entry 1921). A probate registry entry from 1894 establishes that her husband was Lewis George Briault, a jeweller whose shop was at 145 Finchley Road when he died.
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1908 Miss Dorothy Paget
Exhibited Royal Academy.
This portrait is of Henry and Henrietta Paget’s actress daughter, who married Percy William Rhodes in 1908.
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After 1912 Edward Cecil Guinness (1847-1927) 1st Earl of Iveagh.
All references to this portrait by Henry describe it as being a copy of one by Arthur Stockdale Cope. Henry’s copy is now in the Iveagh Collection at Kenwood House Hampstead, accession number 88028848. The Earl’s wikipedia page says that he was created first earl of Iveagh in September 1919. He’s wearing the Star of the Order of St Patrick in the portrait.
Searching the web in December 2018 I couldn’t find any reproductions of Cope’s original; so I guess it must still be owned by the Guinness family. Arthur Stockdale Cope’s dates are 1857-1940 – he was younger than Henry but had a far more financially successful career, painting the great and good. I couldn’t find a full list of Cope’s works; nor any reference to when the original portrait was painted.
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1914 Geoffrey W Paget Esq
Exhibited Royal Academy.
Geoffrey was Henry and Henrietta Paget’s younger son. In 1914 he married Norah, daughter of Alfred and Nannie Dryhurst; for more on them, see my file on the Pagets’ friends.
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1915 Mrs F V McConnell
Exhibited Royal Academy.
Helen Mackenzie McConnell, née Alexander (?1871-1954) was the widow of naturalist and businessman Frederick Vavasour McConnell. They had married in 1899. The McConnell family were partners in Booker Brothers, McConnell and Co which operated sugar plantations in Guyana [British Guiana]. Her husband had died in 1914.
Sources: freebmd though I couldn’t find a birth registration for Helen; probate registry entries 1896, 1914, 1954.
Passage from India to El Dorado: Guyana and the Great Migration by Dave Hollett 1999: p62 for the amazing career of F V McConnell’s father John.
//onlinelibrary.com paper read Linnean Society September 1900: collection of plants from British Guiana made by F V McConnell and J J Quelch. The two men had spent three months in 1898 exploring Roraima, on the borders of British Guiana, Venezuela and Brasil.
Birds of British Guiana, Based on the Collection of Frederick Vavasour McConnell by Charles Chubb with a Preface by Mrs F V McConnell. London: B Quaritch 1916 etc.
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1915 The Sand Garden, Ballaterson Isle of Man 1915. Watercolour.
Seen at www.allposters.co.uk.
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By 1923 Marquis of Lincolnshire (1843-1928). Oil.
Presented to Buckinghamshire County Council by the Marquis in 1923. Accession number BCCJL:73; at County Hall Aylesbury.
See the wikipedia article for Charles Carrington, later Wynn-Carington, Liberal MP, governor of New South Wales.
WORKS OF UNKNOWN DATE – RATHER A LOT OF THEM, ALAS!
- picture sold 1983 as Portrait of the Artist’s Wife and Two Daughters.
Source for the sale and its title at that stage: Bénézit in English: Dictionary of Artists a vast work published Editions Gründ Paris 2006. Volume 10 Mül-Pin p780 entry for Henry Marriott Paget. If correctly identified, Henry’s Portrait of Henrietta, Gladys and Dorothy was sold in 1983: 71 x 91.5cm. No date; sold in London for £4000.
Is it the ‘portrait group’ Henry exhibited at the RA in 1887 and in 1888 at Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts? And in any case, where is the 1983 picture now?
- John Todhunter. Oil. Signed ‘H M Paget’ lower right; not dated
Now at the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin. See it at onlinecollection.nationalgallery.ie, accession number NGI.915. It was donated to the NGI by John’s widow Dora in 1928. As far as I’m aware it was not exhibited during John’s lifetime but it was part of the W B Yeats: A Centenary Exhibition at the NGI in 1965.
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- Susan (Lily) Yeats. Oil. Not signed. No date.
Now at the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin. See it at onlinecollection.nationalgallery.ie, accession number NGI.1419. Susan Mary Yeats – known as Lily – was the daughter of John Butler Yeats and sister of W B Yeats. I don’t think this painting was exhibited during Henry and Etta’s lifetimes. It stayed in the Paget family until their son Geoffrey presented it to the NGI in 1960.
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- sold as Lady in Maroon Dress with Ostrich Feather. Oil. Saleroom details at www.findartinfo.com
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- for sale 2010 as Night Journey but remained unsold. Watercolour. Saleroom details at www.findartinfo.com. Not sure that this is a fully-fledged painting; it might be one of Henry’s illustrations.
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- sold 2014 as A Summer Evening from the Studio, Torquay. Oil on panel. No date. Saleroom details at www.findartinfo.com. There’s a reproduction of it, in its frame, at www.the-saleroom.com and also a picture of the back of the frame, which has its full title on it, and Henry’s signature.
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Copyright SALLY DAVIS
1 September 2019
Contact me about this list especially if you think you own one of the art works on it:
Find the web pages of Roger Wright and Sally Davis, including my list of people initiated into the Order of the Golden Dawn between 1888 and 1901, at:
www.wrightanddavis.co.uk
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