Helen Allingham (1848 to 1926)
Helen Allingham was born Helen Mary Elizabeth Paterson in Swanlincote, a small village in Derbyshire, England, the oldest of seven children born to Alexander Henry Paterson, a physician, and his wife Mary Chance Herford. Early on, the Paterson family moved to Altrincham, Cheshire, where Dr. Paterson established a prosperous practice and his daughter’s talent for art began to develop under the guidance of her grandmother Mary Herford and her aunt Sarah Herford, both accomplished artists in their own right.
Tragically, the young family’s happy life was devastated by an diphtheria epidemic in 1862, when Dr. Paterson, in his efforts to treat others, contracted the illness and died. One of Helen’s young sisters, Isabel, also died, and Mary moved the family to Birmingham where Dr. Paterson’s sisters helped raise the children. The move allowed Helen to begin attending the Birmingham School of Design, and she later won a spot in the Royal Female School of Art in London, where she spent about a year before moving on to the Royal Academy Schools in 1867. The Academy Schools had any number of famous alumni, visitors, and masters, so Helen was exposed to and influenced by the work of artists such as John Everett Millais and Frederick Leighton.
Like many of her contemporaries, Helen Allingham found work as an illustrator, beginning during her days as a student. Attending school three days a week, she was able to support herself with various commissions for children’s books and magazines, and in 1870, she was hired by the newly-minted publication The Graphic while still a student. By 1872, so busy with work for The Graphic and still receiving a steady flow of commission work, Helen opted to leave the Academy to work full-time, and the following years brought impressive opportunities, including the illustrations for Thomas Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd. Her ongoing work with the literary community through book and periodical illustrations introduced her to a number of literary figures of the period, including Irish poet and editor William Allingham. Despite an age difference of twenty-four years, Helen Paterson married William Allingham in 1874.
Allingham was a prominent poet, moving through the upper echelon of London’s literary society and close friends with the likes of Thomas Carlyle and Robert Browning, and after a move to Trafalgar Square (to be near Carlyle), Helen was able to leave The Graphic to focus her efforts on her favorite medium – watercolor, and she had almost immediate success with two paintings accepted for and sold during the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition. This brought the further honor of admittance to the Royal Watercolour Society and later, in 1890, the honor of being the first woman with full membership.
Meanwhile, Helen was balancing career and family life with the birth of three children – a son Gerald Carlyle (1875), a daughter Eva Margaret (1877) and another son, Henry William (1882). She continued exhibiting, displaying over 100 works between 1874 and 1881, when the family moved to Sandhills in Surrey. The surroundings were ideal for Helen’s work, and she soon gained fame for her watercolors of the landscape and her children, but especially for her paintings of cottages. Old cottages were being destroyed during the late 19th century, as the rise of railways and the middle class called for suburban settings with more modern homes, and Helen set about documenting the quaint old homes while they were still standing.
After seven years, William Allingham’s health was declining, so the family return to the London area and settled in Hampstead. Helen still made trips back to Surrey to paint, especially after William’s death in 1889; with little funds and three children to support, she counted on the large sums she was commanding for her cottage portraits to sustain them.
All in all, Helen managed rather well, and although she never achieved great wealth, she was able to support her children doing something she loved. She exhibited each year in London, and found time to travel to France and Italy for fresh inspiration. Her cottage watercolors remained quite popular, perhaps striking a nostalgic note for an England fast disappearing, and these pastoral images of country life served as illustrations in a number of books during the early 1900s, including Happy England with Marcus Huish and The Cottage Homes of England with Stewart Dick. She continued to paint and exhibit until her sudden death at the age of 78.
Hollie Davis, Senior p4A Editor, July 22, 2009