Later Victorian Portraits Catalogue

Artist; born 24 October 1868, in London. Trainee surveyor in Australia before devoting himself to art; exhibition debut Melbourne 1889; member of ‘Heidelberg School’ 1889–90; studied in Paris 1890–91, where met Toulouse-Lautrec, Degas and others, after which alternated between Britain and France; exhibitor at Siegfried Bing’s maison de l’art nouveau, Paris 1896, member of New English Art Club 1900, contributor to The Yellow Book, and associate of Decadent poets and artists, including Aubrey Beardsley, Oscar Wilde and Ernest Dowson (whose portrait by Conder is NPG 2209); oil works feature landscape and seaside scenes, watercolour subjects, often on silk, are historically fanciful; married Stella Belford, a wealthy widow, 1901 and settled in London; died 9 February 1909, in Surrey, from long-term venereal disease.

In youth he was remembered as ‘beautiful to look at, with a head like an antique marble and a sleepy charm’.[1] Later, he appeared ‘all artist – a child. He loved singing and songs – and he loved wine too well … his talk meandered in a soft, slightly incoherent, charming voice and he had the habit of running his hand through his hair with a rather helpless movement.’[2]

Dr Jan Marsh

Referencesback to top

Blanche 1937
Blanche, J.-E., Portraits of a Lifetime 1870–1914, London, 1937.

Brighton 1992
The Dieppe Connection: The Town and Its Artists from Turner to Braque, exh. cat., Brighton Museum & Art Gallery, 1992.

Brooke 1994
Brooke, X., Face to Face: Three Centuries of Artists’ Self-Portraiture, exh. cat., Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, 1994.

Conder 1967
Charles Conder 1868–1909, exh. cat., Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield, 1967.

Eagle 1997
Eagle, M., The Oil Paintings of Charles Conder in the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 1997.

Galbally 2002
Galbally, A., Charles Conder: The Last Bohemian, Melbourne, 2002.

Galbally & Pearce 2003
Galbally, A., and B. Pearce, Charles Conder, exh. cat., Art Gallery of New South Wales: London, 2003.

Gibson 1914
Gibson, F.W., Charles Conder: His Life and Work, London, 1914.

Hall 1997
Hall, N.J., Max Beerbohm Caricatures, New Haven and London, 1997.

Hart-Davis 1972
Hart-Davis, R., A Catalogue of the Caricatures of Max Beerbohm, London, 1972.

Hartrick 1939
Hartrick, A.S., A Painter’s Pilgrimage through Fifty Years, Cambridge, 1939.

Holmes 1936
Holmes, Sir C.J., Self and Partners (Mostly Self), London, 1936.

Ireson 2011
Ireson, N., Toulouse-Lautrec and Jane Avril: Beyond the Moulin Rouge, Courtauld Inst., London, 2011.

Lynch 1921
Lynch, J.G.B., Max Beerbohm in Perspective, London, 1921.

McConkey 1995
McConkey, K., Impressionism in Britain, exh. cat., Barbican Art Gallery, London, 1995.

Manchester 1978
Concise Catalogue of British Portraits, Manchester Art Gallery, 1978.

O’Donoghue 1908–22
O’Donoghue, F., Catalogue of Engraved British Portraits preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum, 5 vols, London, 1908–22 (and vol.6, H.M. Hake, Supplement and indexes, 1925).

Rothenstein 1926
Rothenstein, J., The Portrait Drawings of William Rothenstein 1889–1925, London, 1926.

Rothenstein 1938
Rothenstein, J., The Life and Death of Conder, London, 1938.

Rothenstein 1931–2
Rothenstein, W., Men and Memories: Recollections of William Rothenstein, 2 vols, London, 1931–2.

Rothenstein 1971
William Rothenstein: A Unique Collection, exh. cat., Carlisle City Art Gallery, 1971.

Sato, Lambourne & Holland 2000
Sato, T., L. Lambourne, M. Holland and others, The Wilde Years: Oscar Wilde and the Art of His Time, exh. cat., Barbican Art Gallery, London, 2000.

Symons 1927
Symons, A., Mes Souvenirs, Chapelle-Réanville, France, 1927.