Painters of Wallingford - Edith Hayllar
Edith Hayllar
Edith Hayllar (1860-1948) was the second daughter of James Hayllar, two
years the junior of her sister Jessica, and with her the most accomplished of
the family. Not only were the sisters close in age, but they enjoyed each
other's company. The family recall them setting their easels in the hall of
their house, Castle Priory, Wallingford, at either end of the room, each
choosing a different subject, but able to converse. The house provided the
sisters with their principal inspiration. Each received a thorough training
from their father, James, who from ten till four each day taught them drawing
and perspective before allowing them to paint. Evenings were spent modelling in
clay, and print-making with either etching or mezzotint. Such tuition stood
each of them in good stead, and their pictures show the remarkable degree of
skill that was often achieved in the field of Victorian genre painting.
Edith liked to depict the aftermath of various sporting activities: lunch
after shooting, or tea after boating on the lake. Edith exhibited not only at
the Royal Academy from 1881 to 1897 but also at the Royal Society of British
Artists, the Institute of Oil Painters, and the Dudley Gallery, then much
favoured by women artists. After her marriage in 1900 to Rev. Bruce Mackay she
lived in Sutton Courtenay where her husband was vicar. Curiously she appears
not to have painted after leaving her family.
Works by Edith Hayllar include the following.
A summer
Shower, The Andrew Lloyd Webber Collection. The young man to the
left may have been a nephew of the artist George Dunlop Leslie who later
married one of the Hayllar family. The mania for tennis had swept the country
after its invention in 1874, and was especially popular with the young, for
whom it provided better exercise than archery or croquet.
James Hayllar, 1896, Oil on board, National
Museum of Women in the Arts , Washington, D.C.
A summer
Shower