Ladies were not admitted to the rank of full members of the Society until the year 1890, when she was, to her great pleasure and astonishment, elected a full member. She deserved it; for much of the charm of these exhibitions had been due to the presence of the work which she has contributed to every Exhibition held since her election save two, one of these rare absences being due to her having mistaken the date for sending in.
This election, and the fact that after her marriage she could afford to do without the monetary aid derived from black-and-white work, decided her to embark upon water-colours; although in these she still confined her work to figure subjects, more than one of which continued to be founded on her previous work in monochrome.
The last book in which her name as an illustrator appeared was, appropriately enough, Rhymes for the Young Folk, by her husband, published in Cassell’s in 1885, to which she contributed most of the illustrations. She relinquished black-and-white work without any regret, for although she was much indebted to it, it never held her sympathies, and she always longed to express herself in colour, the medium in which she instinctively felt she had ultimately the best chance of success.
Although we are only separated from the Chelsea of Mrs. Allingham’s days by little more than a quarter of a century, its artistic associations were then of a very different order to those that are in evidence nowadays. The era of vast studios in which duchesses and millionaires find adequate surroundings for their portraits was not yet. Whistler was close to old Chelsea Church, a few doors only from where he recently died. Tite Street, with which his name will always be connected, was not yet built. He was still engaged on those remarkable, but at that time insufficiently appreciated, canvases of scenes which have now passed away, such as “Fireworks at Cremorne,” and “Nocturnes” dimly disclosing old Battersea Bridge. Seymour Haden was etching the picturesque façade of the Walk, with his brother-in-law’s house as a principal object in it, and without the respectable embankment which now makes it more reputable from a hygienic, but less admirable from an artistic point of view. Rossetti was practically the only other artist of note in the quarter. But with one exception Mrs. Allingham’s work was not reminiscent of the place. That exception, however, disclosed to her a field in which she foresaw much delight and abundant possibilities. In the old Pensioners’ Garden at Chelsea Hospital were to be found tenderly-cared-for borders of humble flowers. The garden itself was a haven of repose for the old warriors, and a show-place for their visitors. Mrs. Allingham, like another artist, Hubert Herkomer, about the same time, was touched by the pathos of the surroundings, and, chiefly on the urgency of her husband, she ventured on a drawing of more importance than any hitherto attempted. The subject, which we shall speak of again later, was finished in 1877, and was the first large drawing exhibited by her at the Society of Painters in Water Colours.
Painters—good, bad, and indifferent—of the garden are nowadays such a numerous body that one is apt to forget that the time is quite recent when to paint one with its flowers was a new departure. It is nevertheless the fact, and in taking it up, especially those that are associated with the humbler type of cottages, Mrs. Allingham was practically the originator of a new subject. To the pensioners’ patches at Chelsea we are indebted for the sweet portraits of humble flower-steads which are now cherished by so many a fortunate possessor, and charm every beholder. Thus Chelsea aroused a desire to attack gardens possessing greater possibilities than a town-stunted patch, a desire that was not, however, gratified until two years later when, during a visit in the spring of 1879 to Shere, the first of many cottages and flowers was painted from nature.
In 1881, after the death of Carlyle, Chelsea had attractions for neither husband nor wife, and with a young family growing up and calling for larger and healthier quarters, the house in Trafalgar Square was given up for one at Witley in Surrey, a hamlet close to Haslemere, which she had visited the year before, and in the midst of a country which Birket Foster had already done much to popularise, having resided at a beautiful house there for many years.
The water-colours of this first period, namely from 1875 to 1880, that are reproduced here, are the following:—
8. THE YOUNG CUSTOMERS
From the Water-colour in the possession of Miss Bell.
Painted 1875.