Biography (1840 - 75)

Header Photo: Applicants for Admission to a Casual Ward (1874) (Detail)
Luke Fildes

Oil on canvas, 137.1 x 243.7cm
Royal Holloway College,
University of London, Egham, Surrey
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© Estate of Luke Fildes

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Luke Fildes ~ Biography

Luke Fildes (1844-1927) was brought up by his grandmother, who in 1819 was present on the speaker's platform in Manchester at the Peterloo Massacre, one of the great formative moments of the history of the Left, when eleven workmen at a meeting in favour of parliamentary reform were killed by the miltary. This connection helps us to explain Fildes's own compassionate concern for the lot of the poor. He had already made his mark as a graphic artist before meeting the editor of the Graphic, who commissioned a major illustration as a contribution to the new journal as early as June 1869. The plate Houseless and Hungry certainly got the magazine off to a good start when the first issue appeared on 4 December 1869. It was accompanied by an article by Fildes explaining the genesis of the print (reproduced in the superb book Victorian Painting).

The new journal arrived at Charles Dickens's home, Gad's Hill, near Rochester, Kent, where Millais was staying on a visit. On seeing Fildes's illustration, Millais rushed into Dicken's room waving the paper over his head exclaiming 'I've got him' - 'Got who?' said Dickens, 'A man to illustrate your Edwin Drood'. Dickens wrote to Fildes ... and was invited to Gad's Hill a few months before Dickens's unexpected death on 9th June 1870, leaving the novel The Mystery of Erwin Drood unfinished.

When the oil version of Houseless and Hungry was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1874 as Applicants for Admission to a Casual Ward (header picture) it was accompanied by a quotation from a letter from Dickens (see Victorian Painting book).

Although his name is closely associated with the Graphic he was not a very frequent contributor. By the late 1870s he had turned almost exclusively to painting Venetian genre scenes and portraiture. But he did produce a few more Social Realist paintings. He was commissioned for £3,000 by Sir Henry tate to paint The Doctor in 1891 for presentation to the nation. The subject had been in Fildes's mind since 1877, when on Christmas morning his eldest son Paul had died; the bearing of Doctor Murray, the family physician, had deeply impressed the artist. Fildes built an elaborate cotage window in his studio to get the right effect of dawn breaking, in contrast to the lamplight picking out the doctor's face, the bedding and the restless child.

Van Gogh greatly admired Fildes's illustration The Empty Chair. He wrote about it to his brother Theo (see the book Victorian Painting for more).

Source: Victorian Painting [Book, 2003]

Luke Fildes ~ Gallery

Just some of the magical works. I think his background as an illustrator really helped him to tell a story in a moment in a picture.

Luke Fildes
Applicants for Admission to a Casual Ward
Luke Fildes Fine Art Prints @ amazon.com (direct link)
© Estate of Luke Fildes

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Biography (1840 - 75)

Luke Fildes ~ Biography

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