- John Hungerford Pollen (senior)
John Hungerford Pollen (1820-1902) was an English artist and writer on crafts and furniture.
Life
He was educated at
Eton College andChrist Church, Oxford .http://www.answers.com/topic/john-hungerford-pollen-2] He was ordained as anAnglican priest in 1845, with a parish inLeeds from 1847, writing of his experiences."Concise Dictionary of National Biography"] [http://www.bartleby.com/222/1218.html]He became a Catholic convert and left the Church of England in 1852. [http://www.universitychurch.ie/NewmanAndTheChurch.html] He worked on numerous decorative projects in the 1850s, starting with the hall ceiling at
Merton College, Oxford , where he was a Fellow from 1842; his conversion entailed his giving up that fellowship. Other works, mainly in collaboration, were on the University Museum in Oxford, and the Arthurian murals at theOxford Union , in a group led byDante Gabriel Rossetti and includingWilliam Morris ,Edward Burne-Jones ,Val Prinsep , andRoddam Spencer Stanhope . [Carolyne Larrington, "King Arthur's Enchantresses: Morgan and Her Sisters in Arthurian Tradition" (20060, p. 157.]He worked with
John Henry Newman on church architecture and decoration. He was responsible for the design of the Catholic University Church inDublin . He also worked on theBrompton Oratory . [http://www.opw.ie/about/Obair_June_2006/section000026.html] [http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=47518] Newman invited him to take up a position at theCatholic University of Ireland , and Pollen was Professor of Fine Arts there, from 1855 to 1857. [Frederick O'Dwyer, "The Architecture of Deane and Woodward" (1997), p. 292.]He returned to England in 1857, settling in
Hampstead , London. He worked for "The Tablet ", and throughJohn Everett Millais expanded his contacts with thePre-Raphaelite circle. ["Dictionary of National Biography. Edited by Sidney Lee. Second Supplement. Volume 3. Neil - Young", article on Pollen.]Later he worked for the
South Kensington Museum , where he was appointed assistant keeper in 1863, and was made editor to its science and art department, producing catalogues. [http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1026/is_/ai_18777559] He compiled withHenry Cole a "Universal Catalogue of Books on Art". This was a multi-volume project, beginning publication in 1870, its aim being to furnish a complete bibliographical record of art books in libraries of the West. [http://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/prints_books/prints_books/books/index.html] [http://www.vam.ac.uk/nal/policy/index.html]Works
*Letter to the Parishioners of St. Saviour’s, Leeds (1851)
*Narrative of Five Years at St. Saviour’s, Leeds (1851)
*A Description of the Trajan Column (1874) [http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Gazetteer/Places/Europe/Italy/Lazio/Roma/Rome/Trajans_Column/John_Pollen/home.html online text]
* Ancient and modern Furniture and Woodwork (1876)
* Gold and Silver Smiths' WorkFamily
The architect
C. R. Cockerell was his uncle. [http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-157857_ITM] He married Maria Margaret La Primaudaye in 1855. As Maria Pollen, she was known as an author onlace . [ [http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/lookupname?key=Pollen%2C%20Maria Seven Centuries of Lace (1908), online text] ]Of ten children, John Hungerford Pollen, Jesuit and writer, was his third child, [http://www.bautz.de/bbkl/p/pollen_j.shtml BBK page, in German] inventor
Arthur Pollen was his sixth son. [Jon Tetsuro Sumida, "In Defence of Naval Supremacy: Finance, Technology and British Naval Policy, 1889-1914" (1993), p. 76.]Further reading
*Anne Pollen (1920) "John Hungerford Pollen, 1820-1902"
Notes
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