Arthur Hughes Biography | Oil Painting Reproductions

Arthur Hughes (the artist) in 1846 at the age of fourteen, entered the art school at Somerset House, his first instructor being Alfred Stevens, the following year he was admitted into the Royal Academy schools. Here he met John Everett Millais and Holman Hunt, and influenced by them, he became one of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood group of painters. At the young age of seventeen, Arthur Hughes had the honor of having his first oil painting, Musidora, hung at the Royal Academy. From that point on, he contributed annually to the Royal Academy and later to the Grosvenor and New Gallery exhibitions.

In 1855 Arthur Hughes married Tryphena Foord, his model for April Love, he had six children with her. Arthur Hughes best-known paintings are April Love and The Long Engagement, both of which depict troubled couples thinking about the brevity of love and beauty. They were inspired by John Everett Millais's earlier "couple" compositions.

Like Millais, Arthur Hughes also painted Ophelia which is now at Toledo Museum of Art. Hughes's version is in the form of a triptych, a technique he repeated for scenes from Shakespeare's As You Like It. The beautiful oil portrait Springtide In The Grass, first exhibited in Dublin in 1855, features his beautiful wife Tryphena.

Hughes died in London in 1915, leaving 700 paintings and drawings, along with over 750 book illustrations. Following the death of his wife Tryphena Hughes in 1921, their daughter Emily moved to a smaller house with a shortage of space to house everything. She had her father’s sketches, and all his papers and correspondence, destroyed, thereby destroying a lot of information about his life. He was the father of the English painters Arthur Ford Hughes and the uncle of Edward Robert Hughes.

Art Movement: Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
Artists Influencing Arthur Hughes: Alfred Stevens.
Artist's Biography compiled by Albert L. Mansour at The World's Artist, with text adapted from Wikipedia.