Self-Portrait aged Eighteen (click on the image for more information).
Arthur Hughes was born on 27 January 1832 at 7 Dover Street in London, the third and youngest son of Edward and Amy Hughes. Arthur's father was a London hotel manager. Arthur was educated at Archbishop Tenison's Grammar School in Long Acre where he exhibited a precocious talent for drawing. He entered the Government School of Design at Somerset House in 1846 studying under Alfred Stevens. In December 1847 he entered the Royal Academy Schools after winning a scholarship. In 1849 he was awarded the Silver Medal for his drawing from the Antique and he exhibited his first painting at the Royal Academy that same year.
Hughes became interested in Pre-Raphaelitism in 1850 after reading The Germ. He met Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Holman Hunt, and Ford Madox Brown that same year, although he did not meet John Everett Millais until 1852. In 1852 he exhibited his first Pre-Raphaelite painting, Ophelia, at the Royal Academy. In the 1850s and early 1860s, inspired by Millais, he painted a series of important Pre-Raphaelite paintings including April Love, The Long Engagement, and Home from Sea.
From 1852 to 1858 Hughes shared a studio with the sculptor Alexander Munro. On 26 November 1855 he married Tryphena Foord and they were to eventually have six children. He began his career as an illustrator in 1855 and, after the 1860s, his finest work was produced in this area. He did illustrations for magazines such as Good Words and Good Words for the Young as well as many book illustrations, particularly for authors like George Macdonald, Thomas Hughes, and Christina Rossetti.
In 1857 Hughes was part of the group centered around D. G. Rossetti that decorated the Oxford Union Debating Hall with murals. He also participated in the first Pre-Raphaelite group exhibition held at Russell Place in June 1857. His work was included in the Exhibition of Modern British Art in America organized by William Michael Rossetti that toured the United States starting in New York in October 1857.
In 1860 he moved to Ivy Cottage, Staines, and then in 1863 to 12 Oberstein Road in Wandsworth, where he gradually lost contact with many within the Pre-Raphaelite circle. Although he was asked to be a founding member of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co., he declined as he was living out in the country that would have made attending meetings of the firm difficult. In 1863 he toured the European continent with Alexander Munro visiting Antwerp, Cologne, Coblenz, Nuremberg, Munich, Innsbruck, Verona, Padua and Venice. In 1869 he moved to 2 Finborough Road in West Brompton in London and he took on Albert Goodwin as a studio assistant. In 1871 he began to exhibit oil paintings at the Dudley Gallery.
Hughes taught from January to August 1877 at the Working Men's College. In 1886 he was appointed an Examiner for the Art Training School at South Kensington. In 1878 he moved to Wandle Bank in Wallington, Surrey, and in 1891 to Eastside House, Kew Green, Kew, Surrey, where he lived for the remainder of his life. He exhibited his last work at the Royal Academy in 1908. He also exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery and the New Gallery. He was awarded a Civil List Pension in 1912. He died in relative obscurity at his home in Kew on 23 December 1915 and was buried in Richmond Cemetery.
Timothy Hilton has characterized the career of Arthur Hughes as follows:
The influence of Pre-Raphaelitism in the 1850s and 1860s is perhaps best seen in the art of Arthur Hughes, since his first characteristic as a painter was an ability to absorb and reproduce the innovations of others. He was a born follower, and at no time more so than during his best period, between about 1853 and 1870; just those years when the realistic phase of Pre-Raphaelitism was most diffused, and before Rossetti and Burne-Jones took the movement away from earthly concerns. That later type of painting Hughes could not pursue, for he was a sentimentalist, not a visionary, and that depended on life on this earth. He is a painter of love, and sometimes of marriage, but most of all of trysts and tristesse, of sweet sadness rather than grief, and rarely of happiness. [112-13]
Bibliography
"Artists' Biographies." Visions of Love and Life. Pre-Raphaelite Art from the Birmingham Collection, England. Alexandria, Virginia: Art Services International, 1995. 339.
"Biographical Notes." The Pre-Raphaelites. London: Tate Gallery, 1984. 32.
Hilton, Timothy. The Pre-Raphaelites, London: Thames and Hudson, 1970.
Roberts, Len. Arthur Hughes His Life and Works with a Biographical Introduction by Stephen Wildman. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Antique Collectors' Club, 1997.
Created 1 March 2025