William Hatherell biography

William Hatherell (18 October 1855 - 7 December 1928; born Westbury-on-Trym, Bristol, UK)

William Hatherell was a Victorian era illustrator who worked for magazines such as The Graphic, Harpers, Scribner's and The Century.

Today he is mostly remembered for crudely printed images as sadly the printing technology in Hatherell's day was pretty primitive. Combined with cheap paper stock, it stripped Hatherell's work of much of its sensitivity and expressiveness. Of course, like all resourceful artists Hatherell made the best of his limitations; he emphasized strong compositions and high contrasts that could survive the publication process.

From the 1880s he created illustrations for magazines such as The Graphic and Harper's New Monthly Magazine. He became a member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours in 1888, and of the Royal Institute of Oil Painters in 1898.

He joined the Langham Sketching Club in 1900. He became a member of the Royal West of England Academy, Bristol, in 1903, and of the American Society of Illustrators in 1905. He worked in genres including history painting, Arthurian legend, and the sentimental.

Hatherell might easily have used the disadvantages of his medium as an excuse for dashing off fast, limited work. Many artists did. In fact, his employers encouraged him to do so, in order to increase productivity and profits. Instead, Hatherell worked carefully and deliberately, crafting sensitive pictures with subtle features that were undetectable to his larger audience. As one contemporary noted, Hatherell stubbornly refused to lower his standards:

Hatherell became noted for his refusal to be pressured into hasty work. For illustrating current events, for instance, he used models, often carefully posed in his backyard. When you go back and look at Hatherell's original pictures, you can see the extra effort he put into touches such as subtle shading and expressive faces and gestures.

Hatherell illustrated a variety of books, making 22 watercolours for Hodder's edition of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. He illustrated Thomas Hardy's "The Fiddler of the Reels" for Scribner's Magazine in 1893, and Jude the Obscure when it was brought out in twelve parts in Harper's New Monthly Magazine from December 1894 to November 1895

Hatherell toiled his entire life accepting that publication would degrade the quality of his pictures. He had no defence to this handicap except his wits and his personal integrity. Of course, today almost any artist can publish sharp, high resolution images to the world at the push of a button. We tend to underestimate the competitive advantage that this gives our work over the work of our talented predecessors such as Hatherell.

These delicate touches were difficult and time consuming. Many of them would be undetectable by the reading public. Why did he do all that extra work trying to get it right?

Hatherell was chosen by art instructor Percy V. Bradshaw as one of the artists to illustrate "The Art of the Illustrator", the seminal collection of twenty portfolios demonstrating six stages of a single painting or drawing by twenty different artists and published in 1918 that has, somewhat ironically, stood the test of time.

Hatherell and some of his peers were a lot better than we remember them today, based on their published work. Now that it is possible to recapture the true quality of their original pictures, we owe it to them to honour all those long afternoons they put into trying to get it right when they thought no one might ever know the difference.

He travelled to Australia on a commission from Cassell's to create illustrations for their 1890 book Picturesque Australasia. He returned to live in Brondesbury in northwest London, creating a garden that often forms the background in his paintings of the period.

In 1928 Hatherell was commissioned by Frederick Glasscock to paint ten scenes from Arthurian legend for King Arthur's Great Halls.

He died in London on 7 December 1928
Source: Illustration Art Blogspot; Wikipedia; Illustration Art Gallery

See our original copies of The Art of the Illustrator published by Percy V Bradshaw in 1918.

See WILLIAM HATHERELL ART.