William Logsdail

Inscriptionback to top

Signed, inscr. and dated: ‘WH. Octo.3o.91. / LINCOLN [in a different hand]’.
Original mount stamped: ‘Mount by Caroline Woods / Jersey / Tel: 52605 No. 761’; original backing stamped: ‘C.HALFORD / ARTISTS’ COLORMAN / 86 PARK STREET / CAMDEN TOWN / AQUARELLE TABLET’ (whereabouts of mount and backing unknown, details recorded NPG RP 5895–5901).

This portraitback to top

This drawing is part of a large sequence of portraits by (William) Walker Hodgson dated between 1891 and 1895, depicting figures associated with the arts. For more information see NPG collection 4041(1–5).

There are informal photographs in the family albums but no proper public image of William Logsdail. [1] He exhibited several pictures a year at the Royal Academy for fifty years, almost uninterruptedly – and yet his head never featured in contemporary periodicals and illustrated magazines.

This is the value of the portrait sketches produced by Walker Hodgson, a competent, little-known graphic artist, who between 1891 and 1892 seems to have pressed his way into every significant exhibitor’s studio to record their appearances for some huge and ultimately unfulfilled project. [2]

NPG 5899 was part of a collection of ‘69 drawings of Academicians’ by Walker Hodgson offered to the National Portrait Gallery in 1934 by the Personal Service League and rejected. In December 1957 sixty-one of these drawings were with Appleby Brothers, and some of them, including the portrait of Logsdail, were exhibited in A Fraternity of Artists, at the Christopher Wood Gallery, London, in 1984 (52). Eventually, in 1986, with William Logsdail still unrepresented in the Gallery’s collection, the drawing was purchased at auction by the NPG for £55.

Carol Blackett-Ord

Footnotesback to top

1) Logsdail seems to have been a keen amateur photographer. See Lincoln 1994.
2) See biographical note (2007) in NPG NoA (W. Hodgson).

Physical descriptionback to top

Three-quarter-length, three-quarters to left, seated with legs crossed, holding pipe in right hand.

Provenanceback to top

Coll. Personal Service League, 1934; Appleby Brothers 1957; Christopher Wood Gallery 1984; purchased Phillips, 6 Oct. 1986 (114).

Exhibitionsback to top

A Fraternity of Artists, Christopher Wood Gallery, London, 1984 (52).

Reproductionsback to top

Repr. NPG, CIC, 2004.

View all known portraits for William Logsdail