Luke Fildes was born in Liverpool in
1843. When he was a child he was adopted by his grandmother, Mary
Fildes, a political activist who was one of the speakers at the
Manchester meeting that ended in the
Peterloo Massacre. In the 1840s Mary
Fildes ran the Shrewsbury Arms in Chester and was a leading figure
in the Female Chartist movement.
At the age of seventeen Luke Fildes became a student at the Warrington
School of Art.Fildes moved to South Kensington Art School where he
met Hubert von Herkomer and Frank
Holl. All three men became influenced by the work of Frederick
Walker, the leader of the social realist movement in Britain.
Fildes shared his grandmother's concern for the poor and in 1869 joined
the staff of the Graphic magazine,
an illustrated weekly edited by the social reformer, William
Luson Thomas. Fildes shared Thomas' belief in the power of visual
images to change public opinion on subjects such as poverty and injustice.
Thomas hoped that the images in the Graphic
would result in individual acts of charity and collective social action.
In the first edition of the Graphic
magazine that appeared in December 1869, Luke Fildes was asked to
provide an illustration to accompany an article on the Houseless Poor
Act, a new measure that allowed some of those people out of work shelter
for a night in the casual ward of a workhouse. The picture produced
by Fildes showed a line of homeless people applying for tickets to
stay overnight in the workhouse. The engraving, entitled Houseless
and Hungry, was seen by John Everett Millais who brought
it to the attention of Charles Dickens,
who was so impressed he immediately commissioned Fildes to illustrate
The
Mystery of Edwin Drood.
Fildes soon became a popular artist and by 1870 he had given up working
from the Graphic
and had turned his full attention to oil painting. Several of his
early engravings were later turned into paintings. This included a
version of Houseless
and Hungry
that he called Applicants
to a Casual Ward (1874). Other paintings
by Fildes that dealt with social issues included: Widower
(1876) and The
Return of the Penitent
(1876).
In the 1880s Luke
Fildes became a portrait painter and soon became one of the most successful
artists in England. However, in 1890 Fildes returned to social subjects
when he was commissioned by Henry Tate to
paint a picture for his new National Gallery of British Art. Fildes
decided
to paint a picture based on the death of his son called The
Doctor.
The painting shows a concerned physician watching a dying child. The
Doctor
was acclaimed by the critics and became one of the best-selling engravings
of the Victorian era. One doctor told his students that "a library
of books would not do what this picture has done and will do for the
medical profession in making the hearts of our fellow men warm to
us with confidence and affection."
Despite the £3,000 Henry
Tate
paid for The
Doctor,
Fildes complained that he would have made more money by painting portraits.
After The
Doctor
was finished Fildes returned to painting the rich and famous. Fildes
belief in realism sometimes caused him problems with his subjects.
Cecil
Rhodes was so angry with his portrait he sent Fildes a note with the
cheque claiming that "as soon as it arrives I will burn it".
Fildes responded by refusing the cheque and keeping the picture.
By 1900 Fildes was the most highly paid portrait
painters in England. His painted several members of the royal family
including a portrait of Edward VII on
his deathbed.Luke
Fildes,
who was knighted in 1906, died in 1918.
Luke
Fildes, Houseless and Hungry, The
Graphic (12th April, 1869)
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