CHARLES H. M. KERR (1858-1907) PORTRAIT OF A GYPSY GIRL OIL PAINTING

'' Gypsy Girl ''

Oil on canvas

29 x 25 in (74 x 64 cm) framed approx

Description:

Fine 19th century oil on canvas portrait of a gypsy girl by Charles Henry Malcolm Kerr. Excellent quality and condition portrait of the young lady wearing a red shawl and beige headdress. Inscribed verso. Presented in its original watts frame.

Similar in style and composition to a portrait by Kerr titled 'Claire' in the Cartwright Hall Art Gallery.

Condition:

Ready to hang.

Artist information:

Charles Henry Malcolm Kerr RBA (22 January 1858 – 7 December 1907) (also known as C. H. M. Kerr or Charles Kerr) was a British portrait, genre, landscape painter and illustrator of the late Victorian era.

Born in London, one of six sons and two daughters of Robert Malcolm Kerr, a Judge of the City of London Court and Maria Susannah Soley Kerr. Charles Kerr was educated at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. On leaving Oxford he studied at the Royal Academy Schools and at the Academie Julien in Paris. He exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy from 1884, including 'Wargrave Church', 'The Oldest Inhabitant', 'An Academy Picture' and numerous portraits.

Kerr also exhibited at the Royal Institute of Oil Painters, Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours, Royal Society of British Artists and New English Art Club, as well as at the Royal Hibernian Academy, Manchester City Art Gallery and the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool. In 1890 he was elected a member of the Royal Society of British Artists.

Kerr was amongst those invited to a dinner on 1 May 1889 at the Criterion Restaurant to congratulate James Abbott McNeill Whistler on becoming an Honorary Member of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. He married Gertrude Lizzie Giles, who posed for his 1905 painting 'The Visitor', now in the collection of the Tate.

 

In 1906 Kerr was admitted to the Priory, a private clinic, and then to the Manor House asylum, a private mental hospital located in Chiswick in south-west London; at this time he was addicted to morphine. On 8 September 1906 Kerr left the Manor House in his wife's care, noted in the records as "Discharged 'Relieved'". He died at his home in Burgess Hill just over a year later in December 1907, aged 49.