DEATH OF MRS ALLINGHAM

Evening Star, Issue 19408, 17 November 1926, Page 12

DEATH OF MRS ALLINGHAM

The death is reported of Mrs Helen. Allingham, the water color painter. She had just. completed her seventyeighth year. Helen Allingham was the daughter of Dr A. H. Paterson, and was born on September 26, 1848. In 1874, when she was twenty-six, she married William Allingham, the Irish poet, who was then fifty, and with him she passed fifteen years of a happy married life till his death in 1889. They had two sons and a daughter. In her girlhood Mrs Allipgham gave signs of artistic talent, and after a training at the Royal Academy School she began to work professionally, drawing in black and white for the ‘ Graphic ’ and the ‘ Cornhill,’ and making by her water colors a sufficient impression to be chosen an Associate of the Royal Water Color Society just after her marriage, becoming a’ full member in 1890. For about fifty years she was a regular exhibitor. She was a great favorite with those who like idyllic scenes of country life, carefully drawn and delicately painted. She had affinities with the pre-Raphael-ites, some of whom were close friends of her husband, whose booths they sometimes illustrated; but she never emulated the historic visions or the lofty imaginations of the leaders, contenting hersetf with ex;» t renderings of Fnglish rural scenery, Surrey peasant children, and the cottages round about her home, near Witley and Haslemere. Raskin used sometimes to speak of her witji exaggerated admiration, but to many quieter folk her drawings at the society’s rooms, or in the separate exhibitions which she organised from time to time, gave real and ■ legitimate pleasure* illustrated, among pthsr