HELEN ALLINGHAM

Post 181 -by Gautam Shah

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SUNDAY Feature on ART of Architecture

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Helen Allingham (1848-1926 -née Paterson) was a Victoria era, English illustrator, watercolourist and portrait artist. She was first an illustrator, but after her marriage, she turned to watercolour painting.

She started to paint the English countryside, particularly the picturesque farmhouses and cottages of Surrey and Sussex. She also painted in other parts of the country, like Middlesex, Kent, the Isle of Wight and the West Country, and abroad in Venice, Italy.

She produced rustic countryside scenes with cottages and village people, ‘in a sympathetic style avoiding overt sentimentality’. She became famous for these.

Helen was surrounded by many trends of Modernism in Art, but she continued to draw in her conservative manner, often criticized, for being, ‘overly sentimental’.

‘She used nine colours only, five of which were yellows. Her palette consisted of cobalt, rose madder, aureolin, yellow ochre, raw sienna, sepia, permanent yellow, light red and orange cadmium’.

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