CHARLES GREEN
British 1840-1898

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Charles Green (British 1840-1898) 'An Old Fashioned Christmas Dinner'
Charles Green (British 1840-1898) 'An Old Fashioned Christmas Dinner'

Charles Green (British 1840-1898)

An Old Fashioned Christmas Dinner
watercolour, signed and dated lower left "C Green 1894", Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolour label on back with title and artist name
Size: 22 h x 33 w in (with frame 33 ¼ h x 41 ½ w in)
J20974

British watercolourist and illustrator Charles Green was known for his genre and historical subjects. Born in Well Walk, Hampstead in 1940, he was the youngest of five children of Henry Gilson Green and his wife Mary Anne Reynolds, who had a number of interesting literary connections. His older brother, Henry Towneley Green, was a watercolourist. When the family moved to Islington Charles worked as a solicitor’s clerk while making drawings in his spare time and taking classes at James Matthews leigh’s School of Fine Art in Oxford. With his father’s help from illustrator John Gilbert, he began an apprenticeship with the wood engraver Josiah Whymper in Lambeth and became a talented draughtsman.

Green joined the Langham Sketching Club and Savage Club, and was elected to the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolour in 1864. In 1878 he was elected an honourary member of the Imperial Royal Academy of Vienna. He exhibited at the Royal Academy, working in both watercolour and oil, until 1883. Living with his siblings and aunt in Haverstock Hill, the family received regular visits from literary celebrities and actors. Green’s studio, which he shared with his brother Towneley, was a center for parties and eventually became their home and where he died in 1890. A memorial exhibition was held by the Fine Art Society in 1899 and after Towneley’s death a large sale of their works was held at Christie’s on January 13, 1900. Charles Green’s work is held in numerous collections including the Victoria and Albert and the Mercer Art Gallery.

Working in pen and ink, Green added watercolour, often with a stippled technique influenced by William Henry Hunt. His literary, genre and theatrical illustrations were widely published in magazines, periodicals and books. He was a leading member of the book illustrators known as “The New Men of the Sixties”. He is best known for his illustrations for Robin Hood and Charles Dickens. He illustrated lithographs for the Pears Centenary Edition of Dickens’s “The Christmas Books” from 1843-1848, but died without completing “The Cricket on the Hearth”.