Identity:

Maurice William Greiffenhagen was a painter and illustrator.

Life:

Greiffenhagen studied at the R.A. Schools were he won the Armitage prize. He was a prolific illustrator, who contributed to The Lady's Pictorial and the Daily Chronicle, as well as illustrating the novels of Rider Haggard. In 1886 he was elected a member of the New English Art Club. He taught at the Glasgow School of Art in 1906. He became a member of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters in 1909, an associate of the R.A. in 1916 and a full member of the latter in 1922.

Greiffenhagen, who specialised in portraits and allegorical figures in the Pre-Raphaelite style, e.g. An Idyll, exhibited in London from 1884 onwards, showing at the Royal Academy, Royal Institute of Oil Painters, Royal Society of Portrait Painters, Grosvenor Gallery, New Gallery, New English Art Club, Fine Art Society, Dowdeswell's Gallery and Society of British Artists, a society which elected JW its President in 1886. He also exhibited at the Royal Society of Artists in Birmingham, Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts, Royal Scottish Academy, Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool and Manchester City Art Gallery. He further showed his work at many of the large international exhibitions held in Munich, Venice and Pittsburgh, as well as with the International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers, of which JW was President from 1898.

In 1891 R. A. M. Stevenson was incensed that the Corporation of Liverpool decided not to buy JW's Arrangement in Grey and Black, No. 2: Portrait of Thomas Carlyle (YMSM 137), but bought a painting by Greiffenhagen (#05594).

Bibliography:

Bénézit, E., Dictionnaire des Peintres, Sculpteurs, Dessinateurs et Graveurs, 8 vols, 1956-61; Wood, Christopher, Dictionary of Victorian Artists, Woodbridge, 1971; Johnson, J., and Anna Gruetzner, Dictionary of British Artists 1880-1940, Woodbridge, 1980.