George James Howard

British painter, 1843–1911

BiographyGeorge Howard, 9th Earl of Carlisle (1843-1911) was a patron of the Pre-Raphaelites as well as an artist in his own right. Howard's connection with the Pre-Raphaelites began in the 1860s, when he commissioned Philip Webb to design for him 1 Palace Green, in the newly fashionable London borough of Kensington. The house was decorated throughout by Morris and Co., and contained Burne-Jones’s series of “Earthly Paradise” murals, produced concurrently with William Morris’s poem.

His country seat, Naworth Castele, was also filled with Pre-Raphaelite art. He and his wife Rosalind (an advocate of temperance and socialism) entertained many of the Pre-Raphaelites and their wives in addition to leading writers and cultural figures of the day. Howard was also responsible for Burne-Jones’s last and largest commission, “Arthur in Avalon” (Museo de Ponce, Puerto Rico) which was left unfinished at the artist’s death.

A disciple of the Italian artist, Giovanni Costa, Howard was active in the “Etruscan” group of landscape painters, whose members also included William Blake Richmond and Frederic Leighton.

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