Charles Allston Collins
Charles Allston Collins ( born January 25, 1828 in London, † April 9, 1873 ) was an English painter and writer.
Life
Charles Collins was the son of the English successful landscape painter William Collins (1788-1847) and the younger brother of the successful writer Wilkie Collins.
At the age of 19 he attended the schools of the Royal Academy, where he became friends with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais. He was a conventionally academic painter, who painted in the style of William Etty. When he spent a summer in 1850 with John Everett Millais in Oxfordshire, he learned the views of the Pre-Raphaelite know. Millais Collins proposed as a member of the PRB. The nomination of Thomas Woolner was rejected on the grounds that Collins is not sufficiently interested in their ideas. Instead, he was more interested in Maria Francesca Rossetti, whom he courted when she met with the Brotherhood in Charlotte Street. Mary was flattered, but had other plans for her future.
Convent Thoughts, his most famous work, was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1851, where it was exposed to the general denunciation of the critics regarding the Pre-Raphaelites. The Times wrote:
"We can not blame enough as comprehensive or as strong as we want to do it, call this strange disorder of the mind or the eyes that rages with undiminished absurdity under a class of young artists who PRB. "
Collins image is typical of the early Gothic phase of the movement, and the piety of these works has meant that many critics accused the painter as a Roman Catholic sympathizers. The mood of the Convent Thoughts is certainly similar to the early paintings of Rossetti, but the flowers and the garden reflect Millais' influence. He failed by its own claims.
Throughout his life Collins was an extremely nervous man. He vertrautete to Holman Hunt that he had abdominal pain, if he wanted to paint. He started new works, before he had completed his latest picture, so that half a dozen unfinished canvases standing around.
His first picture was " Berengaria 's Alarm" (1850 ), followed by Convent Thoughts ( 1851), " May in the Regent 's Park " (1852 ) and " Good Harvest " in 1854. Finally he painted a portrait of Georgina Hogarth as Lady Grace (1855 ).
His brother Wilkie introduced him to Charles Dickens, who suggested him to write posts for " Household Words ." Collins first book, " The New Sentimental Journey", descriptions of his visit to Paris, appeared as a series from June to July 1859 in Dickens periodical "All the Year Round". Collins also published The Eye - Witness: And His Evidence about Many Wonderful Things (1860 ).
Collins married Kate Macready Dickens, the daughter of Charles Dickens, on 17 July 1860 in Gad 's Hill Place, the country house of the Dickens family in Higham, Kent. For Kate was with her 20 years, the opportunity to escape from home, because she did not love him. The separation of their parents also played a role. The couple moved to Paris in December 1860. They lived in a friendly relationship, because Collins was impotent. Meanwhile, they had a passionate affair with the famous painter Val Prinsep.
As a writer, he wrote a few ghost stories. The best known was the story, The Trial for Murder (1865 ), co-authored with Charles Dickens.
Charles Allston Collins died on April 9, 1873 at the age of 45 years after a long battle with cancer at 10 Thurloe Place, South Kensington. He was buried in the cemetery at Brompton.
Works
- A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY NEW. (1859 )
- The Eye - witness, : And His Evidence about Many Wonderful Things (1860 )
- A Cruise Upon Wheels: The Chronicle of Some Autumn Wanderings Among the Deserted Post -roads of France. (1863 )
- The Bar Sinister: A Tale (1864 )
Strathcairn (1864 ) and
- Charles Allston Collins and Charles Dickens: " The Trial For Murder " - audio file
Source indication
- Charles Allston Collins In: Dictionary of National Biographies. Edited by Leslie Stephen. Vol XI, Publisher: Smith, Elder & Co., London 1887