Identity:

Reginald Hallward was a painter, illustrator, wood-engraver and designer.

Life:

Hallward studied at the Slade School and Royal College of Art. He worked as a stained glass and decorative designer, and as an illustrator for the Illustrated London News. He was active exhibiting between 1883 and 1937, showing in London at the Royal Academy, Grosvenor Gallery, New Gallery, Dowdeswell Galleries, New English Art Club and Society of British Artists, a Society which elected JW its President in 1886, as well as at the Arlington Gallery and Manchester City Art Gallery.

In the Illustrated London News on 22 July 1882, a wood engraving appeared by Hallward of Harmony in Black and Red (YMSM 236), wrongly entitled 'The Blue Girl', causing JW to write to Edmund Yates in protest, declaring: 'In supposed bitterness of heart and in the Character of the misunderstood I may cry out that the People see not! - but here we have the blind led by the Color blind - and the whole boiling tumble into my ditch!' JW also criticised the quality of the engraving: 'Useless perhaps in these days of aesthetic artisans and cultivated woodcutters to complain of the ugly work - for probably the original itself does not convey an impression of beauty to the culture crowded craftsman employed in translating us - Still I submit that - however faintly - there is yet suggested a less brutal akwardness [sic] of young lady - a less medical condition of drivel - a less stolid capacity for murder than is to be propagated to the four quarters of the globe as the truth respecting Mr. Whistler's picture' (#07109).

Bibliography:

Johnson, J., and Anna Greutzner, Dictionary of British Artists 1880-1940, Woodbridge, 1980.