A Day with the Poet Tennyson
By Alfred Lord Tennyson
Illustrator: Ernest William Haslehust
William Henry Margetson
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Tennyson was born on 6 August 1809 in Somersby, Lincolnshire, England.[5] He was born into a middle-class family distantly descended from John Savage, 2nd Earl Rivers.
Ernest William Haslehust ( E. W. Haslehust )
wasborn in Walthamstow in Essex (now part of Greater London), the son of William Henry Haslehust, and studied at the Slade School of Fine Art in London under Alphonse Legros. He was a member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours (RI), Royal Society of British Artists (RBA), Royal West of England Academy (RWA) and Royal British Colonial Society of Artists (RBC), and exhibited regularly at many venues including the Royal Academy in London. He also designed posters for the LNER and LMS railway companies, and his art was featured in many magazines of the day including the Illustrated London News and The Tatler.
He was a prolific painter of British landscapes in watercolour and is perhaps best remembered for illustrating 36 volumes of the well-known "Beautiful England" series of travel books published by Blackie and Son Limited (see titles below)
William Henry Margetson (W. H. Margetson.)
Margetson was born at Camberwell in Surrey. He studied at Dulwich College, and later at the Royal College of Art and the Royal Academy of Arts. In 1885 he first exhibited at the Royal Academy, and later also at the Royal Society of British Artists, the Royal Institute of Oil Painters and the Grosvenor Gallery.
Margetson painted in oils and watercolours. He made his name with portraits of beautiful women, often with modern hairstyles and hats. He also created religious and allegorical artworks. To begin with he worked in an academic, Victorian style. Later he would use a looser brushstyle inspired by the post-impressionists and the pre-raphaelites, and in particular Lawrence Alma-Tadema. His most successful work was the classically decorative The Sea Hath its Pearls which he exhibited in 1897 at the Royal Academy, now in the possession of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, in Australia.
A portrait of Alfred Tennyson by Margetson is in the National Portrait Gallery in London.
Margetson also worked as an illustrator of books. He was married to the artist Helen Hatton, who he met when they worked on an illustration project together. He lived and worked first in London and later in Blewbury and Wallingford. He died in Wallingford, Oxfordshire, in 1940, at the age of 78.
