Description

Extended Data

DAAO URL

https://www.daao.org.au/bio/harriet-halhed

Birth Place

Tower Hill, VIC, Australia

Biography

Harriet Halhed was born at Tower Hill, Victoria, on 20 July 1850. Her father, William Duodecimus Halhed (as his Latin name says, the twelfth son of John Halhed of Hampshire) and his elder brother Francis Halhed (the eighth son in a family of eighteen) arrived at Sydney in 1837 and obtained land grants at Wandsworth Station in New England and Collyblu on the Liverpool Plains. Francis appears to have to gone back to England after a decade. William married Mary McVittie on 15 May 1847 at St James, Sydney, and they were living at Surry Hills when their first child was born. They moved to the Port Fairy area of Victoria in about 1849, where William was farming at Tower Hill and had an auctioneer’s licence for trading horses. Their second child,Harriet, was born in 1850. Two more children were born in 1852 and 1856, before both parents died in late 1856: William died of apoplexy in September (aged 47) and Mary succumbed to TB in December (aged 34), leaving four children aged between 8 years and 9 months. Their uncle Francis (1804-1880) came to the rescue and took them back to England, where he raised them beside his own family of five at his home at Harbledown in Kent. The younger siblings both died young at Harbledown, leaving only Harriet and her older sister. Harriet’s Portrait of Francis Halhed is an affectionate tribute to her generous uncle. Harriet seems to have been the only Halhed to have pursued an artistic career. She was trained in England and France. Her Times obituary (17 February 1933) states that her training began at the art school founded by Sidney Cooper in Canterbury, but, as she would have been 32 in 1882 when the school opened, and had already been exhibiting since at least 1877, this is hard to credit. Perhaps she took private lessons with Cooper before he set up the school or perhaps she took some post-graduate courses there to refine her technique. The Times obituary says that Harriet won a scholarship to South Kensington (Royal College of Art) and then went to Paris, where she worked for some time at the studios of Louis Deschamps. He was only four years older than her, which suggests this may have been a professional partnership, rather than student/teacher relationship. His style influenced hers for the rest of her career. By 1892, she was resident in Sevenoaks, Kent, and giving art classes. Amongst her students was the wealthy young heiress Janet Forbes. In January 1897, Harriet moved to London, renting a studio at the rear of a house on Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, which the young architect and designer Charles Robert Ashbee had designed and which he now occupied, together with his mother and sisters. Through Harriet’s classes Janet met and married CRA (as he was always called) in spite of his open homosexuality. Despite their rather disastrous marriage, the Ashbees were leading figures in the Arts and Craft Movement, followers of William Morris and 'sentimental Socialists’. Harriet was now part of the bohemian Chelsea set of Edwardian times, an eccentric dresser and rather shy. She was also a member of the Women’s International Art Club and took part in many of their exhibitions. Although she does not appear to have visited Australia again and her work contains no Australian subject matter, she was claimed as an Australian by her contemporaries. The Adelaide Advertiser of 2 May 1910 states: “The following Australasian artists are represented at the Old Salon, Paris: Miss Harriet Halhed, Mr. Arthur Streeton, Miss Ada Levey, Miss Hilda Rix.” Harriet did not marry and most of the subjects of her portraits are women or children. Upon her death in 1933, The Times obituary described her as: “An artist through and through, whose work has won recognition in the leading exhibitions of this country and in Paris, she would have been more widely known had not a sensitive and somewhat elusive nature led her to shun all that savoured of self-assertion or advertisement.” Writers: Edwards, John Date written: 2011 Last updated: 2011

Born

b. 20 July 1850

Summary

Australian-born painter in the Edwardian style; trained in UK and France. Associated with Chelsea bohemian set and Arts and Craft Movement.

Gender

Female

Died

5-Feb-33

Age at death

83