Christiana Herringham

Christiana Jane Herringham (Lady Herringham) (1852–1929) was a British artist, copyist and art patron. She is noted for her part in establishing the National Art Collections Fund in 1903 to help preserve Britain's artistic heritage.

She was the daughter of Thomas Wilde Powell, a wealthy patron of the Arts and Crafts Movement. In 1880 she married the physician Wilmot Herringham, (later Sir Wilmot Herringham) with whom she had two sons. She was committed to women's suffrage from 1889 onwards.

A talented artist and copyist of Old Masters, she dedicated herself to the revival of tempera painting, translating Cennino Cennini's 15th century treatise Il libro dell' arte o trattato della pittura in 1899 and founding the Society of Painters in Tempera in 1901.

She provided the money that launched the National Art Collections Fund in 1903 and served as the only woman on the NACF's first executive committee. She later assisted in founding the India Society, which encouraged respect and appreciation for Indian artistic traditions.

As part of her work for the India Society, she travelled to India in 1906 and 1911 and made copies of the Buddhist cave paintings at Ajanta near Hyderbad, which were deteriorating badly. An exhibition of the copies opened at the Chrystal Palace in June 1911. Herringham, however, had begun to suffer from delusions of pursuit and persecution and was admitted to an asylum. She spent the rest of her life in mental institutions.

Her biographer Mary Lago suggests Christiana Herringham may have been the inspiration for Mrs Moore in E.M. Forster's novel A Passage to India.

References

Mary Lago. Christiana Herringham and the Edwardian Art Scene, University of Missouri Press, 1995 IISBN 9780-8262-1024-1

Mary Lago. "Herringham, Christiana Jane, Lady Herringham (1852–1929)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Sept 2004

External Links

• Mary Lago Collection at the University of Missouri Libraries

Persondata
Name	Herringham, Christiana
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Date of birth	1852
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Date of death	1929
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