Henry Wallis

Henry Wallis ( born February 21, 1830 in London, † December 20, 1916 in Croydon, Surrey ) was a British painter in the style of the Pre-Raphaelites.

Life

Henry Wallis was born out of wedlock in 1830, the son of Mary Anne Thomas; his father is unknown. Only when his mother in 1845 the wealthy London-based architect Andrew Wallis married, he took after his stepfather 's surname Wallis.

Between 1848 and 1853, was trained as a painter Henry Wallis at the Royal Academy of Arts in London and at the Académie des Beaux -Arts in Paris. In Paris, he was also a student of Charles Gleyre. 1853 Wallis presented from the first time.

After the death of his stepfather in 1859, he inherited a considerable fortune and was able to go on long trips abroad, where he devoted himself to his interest in archeology, ceramics, and the Renaissance. As a painter, he entered since less prominent. Wallis died in 1916 unmarried and was buried at Highgate Cemetery in London.

Work

Wallis ' first big hit, while his main work is the painting " The Death of Chatterton " ( The Death of Chatterton, 1856, now in the Tate Britain ). Thomas Chatterton, a young poet who had taken their own lives in despair in 1770 with only 17 years, was in the 19th century for many young and not yet established artists a romantically transfigured idol. Wallis affinity for the Pre-Raphaelites is evident in this painting to the bright colors and the careful design of the often symbolically important details. The image made ​​Wallis famous overnight; the critic John Ruskin called it " flawless and wonderful ." In Wallis's painting of the poet George Meredith served as the model for Chatterton; Two years later (1858 ) left Meredith's wife her husband to start a relationship with Wallis.

Also well known was Wallis Oil Painting " The Stone Breakers " (The Stonebreaker, 1857, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery), showing a hunched quarry workers at sunset. Although the man just seems to sleep at first glance, is indicated by fine imagery, that he died rather of exhaustion. The image was later ' interpreted rejection of the Pre-Raphaelites towards an early Victorian " social realism ", but on the other hand strengthened then just this painting Wallis ' such as T. Wallis reputation as a veritable Pre-Raphaelite.

His research results to Persian, Egyptian, Greek and Byzantine ceramics published Henry Wallis 1885-1899 in twenty volumes.