George Charles Haité
Encyclopedia
George Charles Haité was an English designer, painter, illustrator and writer. His most famous work is the iconic cover design of the Strand Magazine
launched in 1891 which helped popularise the Sherlock Holmes
stories of Arthur Conan Doyle
. Haité was also a founder member and the first president of the London Sketch Club
.
, Kent
, on 8 June 1855, the second child and eldest son of George Haité senior. His ancestors were French Huguenot immigrants, an awareness of which seems to have informed his later catchphrase that "art holds no nationality."
His great grandfather, William Haité, and his grandfather, Henry Haité, worked in the calico printing industry centred around the River Cray
in Kent. Henry's brother, John, was also a textile designer, samples of whose "Spring Fashions for 1813" are to be found in the archives of the Victoria and Albert Museum
.
His father, George Haité (1825–1871), was a prominent early Victorian cashmere shawl designer, albeit sadly so disillusioned with being a "slave of the fashion of the hour" that he actively discouraged his son from following him into the same profession. Ironically, it was his father's premature death of smallpox
aged 45 which propelled G.C. to do just that when he found himself head of the household at the age of 16.
Haité would later comment in his own Who's Who
entry that he was "absolutely self-taught" in art. After moving to London in the early 1870s he began making a name for himself as a wallpaper and carpet designer, later working in metal, tapestry and stained glass.
In 1883 he exhibited the first of many paintings at the Royal Academy
. Haité worked in both oils and watercolours, specialising in landscapes with many executed on his travels to Venice
, Morocco
and Northern Europe
. In 1897 his street scene of Dortmund
won the Gold landscape prize at that year's Crystal Palace
exhibition. He would usually sign his work "Geo C. Haité" or "G.C. Haité".
According to his friend, the great war correspondent Frederic Villiers: "I never met a man who was so rapid with brush and colours in transferring an impression to his canvas. His memory is so marvellously correct that one may watch him produce, within an hour or so, a sketch of a Dutch market-place with its greyness of atmosphere, a street in Bruges
with the architectural beauty of its cathedral and houses, or a suburb in Tangier
with its mosques and minarets glowing in the heat against a deep purple sky, as accurate in tone and drawing as if he had been seated in front of his subject."
As Villiers also commented, Haité was "one of the busiest men of his own little stage, for he is a president or fellow of some eight or nine art societies." Indeed, his talents would earn him membership of numerous art societies including the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours, the Royal Society of British Artists
, the Royal Institute of Oil Painters
, the Society of Miniature Painters
, the Royal British Colonial Society Of Artists, the National Association of House Painters and Decorators of England and Wales and, as president, the Institute of Decorative Designers.
Haité also wrote and lectured on art and design and in 1897 was elected president of the Nicolson Institute art gallery in Staffordshire
. His inexhaustible social activities even stretched beyond the visual arts, also involved in the famous literary club the Sette of Odd Volumes (see below), one of the earliest members of the Japan Society of London
and, from 1888, a Fellow of the Linnean Society
.
In 1886 Haité published Plant Studies for Artists, Designers and Art Students. Though it would be the only book solely written and illustrated by Haité, he edited and contributed drawings to numerous others including naturalist Edward Tickner Edwardes' Side-Lights of Nature in Quill and Crayon and In The Green Leaf and the Sere by the pseudonymous ornithologist 'A Son Of The Marshes'.
In late 1890 he was asked by editor George Newnes
to provide the cover pen and ink illustration for his new magazine The Strand, launched in January 1891. As sales of the magazine took off with the first of its Sherlock Holmes stories beginning with A Scandal in Bohemia
in the July 1891 issue, Haité's graphic rendering of London's Strand looking Eastwards with the magazine title suspended from telegraph wires was destined to become an icon of late-Victorian publishing.
Variations of Haité's design were featured on its sister title, The Strand Musical Magazine, and on several Sherlock Holmes first edition bound volumes.
. Even more revolutionary for the club, it was under Haité's presidency that the Sette broke with male-dominated tradition by staging its first mixed "Ladies Evening".
Other than its core membership of "Brothers", the Sette attracted many esteemed guests to its supper evenings and it was here that Haité met, among others, Jerome K. Jerome
, Aubrey Beardsley
, John Tenniel
, Charles Dickens, Jr. and, on more than one occasion, Oscar Wilde
.
There are records of at least four meetings with Wilde, the earliest being a report in the Pall Mall Gazette
of a preliminary gathering of "The British Association Of British Artists" at London's Grosvenor House
on 8 June 1888: Haité was there representing "art applied to industry" while Wilde was present as editor of The Woman's World
magazine. Fellow Sette member Edward Heron-Allen
("The Necromancer") also records Haité and Wilde in the same verse of a poem detailing a club dinner on 8 January 1890 when after Wilde's "gay and apt oration" Haité launched into a congratulatory "panegyric". At the following month's Sette meeting Haité's special guest was Oscar's brother, journalist Willie Wilde
.
, a breakaway faction of the prestigious Langham Sketching Club where he had acted as president from 1883 until 1887. The catalyst for this split in ranks was a seemingly petty argument over hot or cold suppers. Those with a preference for hot suppers including Tom Browne, John Hassall
, Dudley Hardy and Phil May left the Langham to create their own rebel drawing society. Haité was asked to join them as inaugural president and the London Sketch Club was formed, holding its first dinner on April Fool's Day.
Although Haité sat for a formal oil portrait by Frank O'Sullivan, it is through the many caricatures and drawings in the archives of the London Sketch Club that we have the most vivid representations of both his physical appearance and eccentric mannerisms, frequently depicted mid-oration, arms gesticulating wildly, hair on end and sporting an impressive Jimmy Finlayson
-style soup-strainer moustache. Such was Haité's habit of speech-making it made him a frequent target of affectionate ribbing from other members. At the time of his presidency the club's supper guests included Robert Baden-Powell and Arthur Conan Doyle with whom Haité shared a love of cricket
.
After four years as president Haité was persuaded to step down in 1902, after which the club would elect a new president every year. Despite his previous desertion, Haité was still welcomed at the Langham Sketching Club and would be re-elected its president one last time in 1908.
near Chiswick
. He lived and worked at two separate addresses there, both of which he christened Ormsby Lodge. The couple had one daughter, Elsie Blanche Evelyn Frances Haité (1889–1971). An invalid for the last nine years of his life, Haité died on 31 March 1924. His widow Fanny remained at Ormsby Lodge, The Avenue, Bedford Park until her death in 1935.
A selection of work by both Haité and his namesake father can be viewed in the prints and drawings collection of the Victoria and Albert museum, Kensington, London.
Strand Magazine
The Strand Magazine was a monthly magazine composed of fictional stories and factual articles founded by George Newnes. It was first published in the United Kingdom from January 1891 to March 1950 running to 711 issues, though the first issue was on sale well before Christmas 1890.Its immediate...
launched in 1891 which helped popularise the Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective created by Scottish author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The fantastic London-based "consulting detective", Holmes is famous for his astute logical reasoning, his ability to take almost any disguise, and his use of forensic science skills to solve...
stories of Arthur Conan Doyle
Arthur Conan Doyle
Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle DL was a Scottish physician and writer, most noted for his stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes, generally considered a milestone in the field of crime fiction, and for the adventures of Professor Challenger...
. Haité was also a founder member and the first president of the London Sketch Club
London Sketch Club
The London Sketch Club was founded on 1 April 1898 as a social club for artists working in the field of commercial graphic art, mainly for newspapers, periodicals and books. The founder members were Dudley Hardy, Phil May, Walter Fowler, Lance Thackeray, Cecil Aldin, W Sanders Fiske, Walter...
.
Life and Art
George Charles Haité was born in BexleyheathBexleyheath
Bexleyheath is a main suburban district of Southeast London, England, in the London Borough of Bexley with a small percentage of the district itself being in the London Borough of Greenwich. Bexleyheath is located on the border of Inner London and Outer London. It is east south-east of Charing Cross...
, Kent
Kent
Kent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...
, on 8 June 1855, the second child and eldest son of George Haité senior. His ancestors were French Huguenot immigrants, an awareness of which seems to have informed his later catchphrase that "art holds no nationality."
His great grandfather, William Haité, and his grandfather, Henry Haité, worked in the calico printing industry centred around the River Cray
River Cray
The River Cray is a tributary of the River Darent in southern England. It rises in Priory Gardens in Orpington in the London Borough of Bromley, where rainwater permeates the chalk bedrock and forms a pond at the boundary between the chalk and impermeable clay...
in Kent. Henry's brother, John, was also a textile designer, samples of whose "Spring Fashions for 1813" are to be found in the archives of the Victoria and Albert Museum
Victoria and Albert Museum
The Victoria and Albert Museum , set in the Brompton district of The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London, England, is the world's largest museum of decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 4.5 million objects...
.
His father, George Haité (1825–1871), was a prominent early Victorian cashmere shawl designer, albeit sadly so disillusioned with being a "slave of the fashion of the hour" that he actively discouraged his son from following him into the same profession. Ironically, it was his father's premature death of smallpox
Smallpox
Smallpox was an infectious disease unique to humans, caused by either of two virus variants, Variola major and Variola minor. The disease is also known by the Latin names Variola or Variola vera, which is a derivative of the Latin varius, meaning "spotted", or varus, meaning "pimple"...
aged 45 which propelled G.C. to do just that when he found himself head of the household at the age of 16.
Haité would later comment in his own Who's Who
Who's Who (UK)
Who's Who is an annual British publication of biographies which vary in length of about 30,000 living notable Britons.-History:...
entry that he was "absolutely self-taught" in art. After moving to London in the early 1870s he began making a name for himself as a wallpaper and carpet designer, later working in metal, tapestry and stained glass.
In 1883 he exhibited the first of many paintings at the Royal Academy
Royal Academy
The Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London. The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment and...
. Haité worked in both oils and watercolours, specialising in landscapes with many executed on his travels to Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
, Morocco
Morocco
Morocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa. It has a population of more than 32 million and an area of 710,850 km², and also primarily administers the disputed region of the Western Sahara...
and Northern Europe
Northern Europe
Northern Europe is the northern part or region of Europe. Northern Europe typically refers to the seven countries in the northern part of the European subcontinent which includes Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Finland and Sweden...
. In 1897 his street scene of Dortmund
Dortmund
Dortmund is a city in Germany. It is located in the Bundesland of North Rhine-Westphalia, in the Ruhr area. Its population of 585,045 makes it the 7th largest city in Germany and the 34th largest in the European Union....
won the Gold landscape prize at that year's Crystal Palace
The Crystal Palace
The Crystal Palace was a cast-iron and glass building originally erected in Hyde Park, London, England, to house the Great Exhibition of 1851. More than 14,000 exhibitors from around the world gathered in the Palace's of exhibition space to display examples of the latest technology developed in...
exhibition. He would usually sign his work "Geo C. Haité" or "G.C. Haité".
According to his friend, the great war correspondent Frederic Villiers: "I never met a man who was so rapid with brush and colours in transferring an impression to his canvas. His memory is so marvellously correct that one may watch him produce, within an hour or so, a sketch of a Dutch market-place with its greyness of atmosphere, a street in Bruges
Bruges
Bruges is the capital and largest city of the province of West Flanders in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is located in the northwest of the country....
with the architectural beauty of its cathedral and houses, or a suburb in Tangier
Tangier
Tangier, also Tangiers is a city in northern Morocco with a population of about 700,000 . It lies on the North African coast at the western entrance to the Strait of Gibraltar where the Mediterranean meets the Atlantic Ocean off Cape Spartel...
with its mosques and minarets glowing in the heat against a deep purple sky, as accurate in tone and drawing as if he had been seated in front of his subject."
As Villiers also commented, Haité was "one of the busiest men of his own little stage, for he is a president or fellow of some eight or nine art societies." Indeed, his talents would earn him membership of numerous art societies including the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours, the Royal Society of British Artists
Royal Society of British Artists
The Royal Society of British Artists is a British art body established in 1823 as the Society of British Artists, as an alternative to the Royal Academy.-History:...
, the Royal Institute of Oil Painters
Royal Institute of Oil Painters
The Royal Institute of Oil Painters, also known as ROI, is an association of painters in London and is the only major art society which features work done only in oil. It is a member society of the Federation of British Artists.-History:...
, the Society of Miniature Painters
Royal Society of Miniature Painters Sculptors and Gravers
The aims of the Royal Society of Miniature Painters, Sculptors and Gravers are to esteem, protect and practice the traditional 16th Century art of miniature painting emphasising the infinite patience needed for its fine techniques. Its patron is His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales.The society...
, the Royal British Colonial Society Of Artists, the National Association of House Painters and Decorators of England and Wales and, as president, the Institute of Decorative Designers.
Haité also wrote and lectured on art and design and in 1897 was elected president of the Nicolson Institute art gallery in Staffordshire
Staffordshire
Staffordshire is a landlocked county in the West Midlands region of England. For Eurostat purposes, the county is a NUTS 3 region and is one of four counties or unitary districts that comprise the "Shropshire and Staffordshire" NUTS 2 region. Part of the National Forest lies within its borders...
. His inexhaustible social activities even stretched beyond the visual arts, also involved in the famous literary club the Sette of Odd Volumes (see below), one of the earliest members of the Japan Society of London
Japan Society of the UK
The Japan Society of the United Kingdom, founded in 1891, is the oldest and most respected organization dealing with European-Japanese relations.The society is also known as the Japan Society of London, or simply as The Japan Society.-History:...
and, from 1888, a Fellow of the Linnean Society
Linnean Society of London
The Linnean Society of London is the world's premier society for the study and dissemination of taxonomy and natural history. It publishes a zoological journal, as well as botanical and biological journals...
.
Illustration work and The Strand magazine
In late 1890 he was asked by editor George Newnes
George Newnes
Sir George Newnes, 1st Baronet was a publisher and editor in England.-Background and education:...
to provide the cover pen and ink illustration for his new magazine The Strand, launched in January 1891. As sales of the magazine took off with the first of its Sherlock Holmes stories beginning with A Scandal in Bohemia
A Scandal in Bohemia
"A Scandal in Bohemia" was the first of Arthur Conan Doyle's 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories to be published in The Strand Magazine and the first Sherlock Holmes story illustrated by Sidney Paget....
in the July 1891 issue, Haité's graphic rendering of London's Strand looking Eastwards with the magazine title suspended from telegraph wires was destined to become an icon of late-Victorian publishing.
Variations of Haité's design were featured on its sister title, The Strand Musical Magazine, and on several Sherlock Holmes first edition bound volumes.
The Sette of Odd Volumes and Oscar Wilde
In 1883 Haité was elected a member of the elite literary club the Sette of Odd Volumes. He became its annual vice-president in 1887 and president - known as "Oddship" - from 1891 - 1892. Since the Sette addressed its members under individual titles pertaining to their interests or profession, Haité was referred to as "The Art-Critic". As president he fashioned his own medal shaped like a painter's palette and staged a then-novel "Phonograph Evening" where the members recorded their voices onto an Edison wax Phonograph cylinderPhonograph cylinder
Phonograph cylinders were the earliest commercial medium for recording and reproducing sound. Commonly known simply as "records" in their era of greatest popularity , these cylinder shaped objects had an audio recording engraved on the outside surface which could be reproduced when the cylinder was...
. Even more revolutionary for the club, it was under Haité's presidency that the Sette broke with male-dominated tradition by staging its first mixed "Ladies Evening".
Other than its core membership of "Brothers", the Sette attracted many esteemed guests to its supper evenings and it was here that Haité met, among others, Jerome K. Jerome
Jerome K. Jerome
Jerome Klapka Jerome was an English writer and humorist, best known for the humorous travelogue Three Men in a Boat.Jerome was born in Caldmore, Walsall, England, and was brought up in poverty in London...
, Aubrey Beardsley
Aubrey Beardsley
Aubrey Vincent Beardsley was an English illustrator and author. His drawings, done in black ink and influenced by the style of Japanese woodcuts, emphasized the grotesque, the decadent, and the erotic. He was a leading figure in the Aesthetic movement which also included Oscar Wilde and James A....
, John Tenniel
John Tenniel
Sir John Tenniel was a British illustrator, graphic humorist and political cartoonist whose work was prominent during the second half of England’s 19th century. Tenniel is considered important to the study of that period’s social, literary, and art histories...
, Charles Dickens, Jr. and, on more than one occasion, Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...
.
There are records of at least four meetings with Wilde, the earliest being a report in the Pall Mall Gazette
Pall Mall Gazette
The Pall Mall Gazette was an evening newspaper founded in London on 7 February 1865 by George Murray Smith; its first editor was Frederick Greenwood...
of a preliminary gathering of "The British Association Of British Artists" at London's Grosvenor House
Grosvenor House
Grosvenor House was one of the largest private townhouses situated on London's exclusive Park Lane in the district of Mayfair. The house was the home of the Grosvenor family for more than a century...
on 8 June 1888: Haité was there representing "art applied to industry" while Wilde was present as editor of The Woman's World
The Woman's World
The Woman's World was a Victorian women's magazine published by Cassell between 1886 and 1890, edited by Oscar Wilde between 1887 and 1889.-Foundation:...
magazine. Fellow Sette member Edward Heron-Allen
Edward Heron-Allen
Edward Heron-Allen was an English polymath, writer, scientist and Persian scholar who translated the works of Omar Khayyam.-Life:...
("The Necromancer") also records Haité and Wilde in the same verse of a poem detailing a club dinner on 8 January 1890 when after Wilde's "gay and apt oration" Haité launched into a congratulatory "panegyric". At the following month's Sette meeting Haité's special guest was Oscar's brother, journalist Willie Wilde
Willie Wilde
William 'Willie' Charles Kingsbury Wilde was an Irish journalist and poet of the Victorian era and the older brother of Oscar Wilde.-Background:...
.
The London Sketch Club
In the spring of 1898 Haité was instrumental in the formation of the London Sketch ClubLondon Sketch Club
The London Sketch Club was founded on 1 April 1898 as a social club for artists working in the field of commercial graphic art, mainly for newspapers, periodicals and books. The founder members were Dudley Hardy, Phil May, Walter Fowler, Lance Thackeray, Cecil Aldin, W Sanders Fiske, Walter...
, a breakaway faction of the prestigious Langham Sketching Club where he had acted as president from 1883 until 1887. The catalyst for this split in ranks was a seemingly petty argument over hot or cold suppers. Those with a preference for hot suppers including Tom Browne, John Hassall
John Hassall (illustrator)
John Hassall was born in Walmer, Kent on 21 May 1868, died 8 March 1948 and was an English illustrator.Hassall educated in Worthing, at Newton Abbot College and at Neuenheim College, Heidelberg. After twice failing entry to The Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, he emigrated to Manitoba in Canada...
, Dudley Hardy and Phil May left the Langham to create their own rebel drawing society. Haité was asked to join them as inaugural president and the London Sketch Club was formed, holding its first dinner on April Fool's Day.
Although Haité sat for a formal oil portrait by Frank O'Sullivan, it is through the many caricatures and drawings in the archives of the London Sketch Club that we have the most vivid representations of both his physical appearance and eccentric mannerisms, frequently depicted mid-oration, arms gesticulating wildly, hair on end and sporting an impressive Jimmy Finlayson
Jimmy Finlayson
James Henderson "Jimmy" Finlayson was a Scottish actor who worked in both silent and sound comedies. Bald, with a fake moustache, Finlayson had many trademark comic mannerisms and is famous for his squinting, outraged, "double take and fade away" head reaction, and characteristic expression...
-style soup-strainer moustache. Such was Haité's habit of speech-making it made him a frequent target of affectionate ribbing from other members. At the time of his presidency the club's supper guests included Robert Baden-Powell and Arthur Conan Doyle with whom Haité shared a love of cricket
Cricket
Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...
.
After four years as president Haité was persuaded to step down in 1902, after which the club would elect a new president every year. Despite his previous desertion, Haité was still welcomed at the Langham Sketching Club and would be re-elected its president one last time in 1908.
Death and legacy
In 1883 George married Fanny Hodgkinson and settled in the new garden suburb of Bedford ParkBedford Park
Bedford Park is the name of several places around the world:*In Australia:** Bedford Park, South Australia, a suburb of Adelaide*In Canada:** Bedford Park, Toronto, Ontario, a neighborhood of Toronto*In the United Kingdom...
near Chiswick
Chiswick
Chiswick is a large suburb of west London, England and part of the London Borough of Hounslow. It is located on a meander of the River Thames, west of Charing Cross and is one of 35 major centres identified in the London Plan. It was historically an ancient parish in the county of Middlesex, with...
. He lived and worked at two separate addresses there, both of which he christened Ormsby Lodge. The couple had one daughter, Elsie Blanche Evelyn Frances Haité (1889–1971). An invalid for the last nine years of his life, Haité died on 31 March 1924. His widow Fanny remained at Ormsby Lodge, The Avenue, Bedford Park until her death in 1935.
A selection of work by both Haité and his namesake father can be viewed in the prints and drawings collection of the Victoria and Albert museum, Kensington, London.