Arthur Boyd Houghton (13 March 1836 – 25 November 1875) was a British painter (

oil An oil is any nonpolar chemical substance that is composed primarily of hydrocarbons and is hydrophobic (does not mix with water) and lipophilic (mixes with other oils). Oils are usually flammable and surface active. Most oils are unsaturate ...

and

watercolour Watercolor (American English) or watercolour ( Commonwealth English; see spelling differences), also ''aquarelle'' (; from Italian diminutive of Latin 'water'), is a painting method"Watercolor may be as old as art itself, going back to the ...

s) and illustrator. Houghton was born in Kotagiri,

Madras Chennai, also known as Madras ( its official name until 1996), is the capital and largest city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost state of India. It is located on the Coromandel Coast of the Bay of Bengal. According to the 2011 Indian ce ...

, India. His work was varied and was highly regarded during the mid-19th century. He traveled to America and

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, creating illustrations for ''The Graphic'' and for numerous books, including ''

The Arabian Nights ''One Thousand and One Nights'' (, ), is a collection of Middle Eastern folktales compiled in the Arabic language during the Islamic Golden Age. It is often known in English as ''The Arabian Nights'', from the first English-language edition () ...

'' and ''

Don Quixote , the full title being ''The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha'', is a Spanish novel by Miguel de Cervantes. Originally published in two parts in 1605 and 1615, the novel is considered a founding work of Western literature and is of ...

''. His work was strongly influenced by the

Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB), later known as the Pre-Raphaelites, was a group of English painters, poets, and art critics, founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Michael Rossett ...

. He played a leading role in the renaissance of wood-engraved illustration during the golden decade of English book illustration (c. 1860–75), when a new school of artists overcame the limitations of the medium. Deeply influenced by the idealism of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, he imbued both his paintings and drawings with a haunting blend of poetic realism. He was the fourth son of Captain John Michael Houghton (1797–1874), who served in the East India Company's Marine as a draughtsman.

Laurence Housman Laurence Housman (; 18 July 1865 – 20 February 1959) was an English playwright, writer and illustrator whose career stretched from the 1890s to the 1950s. He studied art in London and worked largely as an illustrator during the first years o ...

produced a selection from his work which was dedication to the artist's daughter Mrs E.C. Davis. (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trúbner & Co., 1896).

Paul Hogarth Paul Hogarth, OBE, Royal Academician, RA (born Arthur Hoggarth) (4 October 1917 – 27 December 2001) was an English artist and illustrator. He is best known for the cover drawings that he prepared in the 1980s for the Penguin Books, Pengu ...

wrote a biography and monograph (London: Gordon Fraser, 1981). Work by this artist is held within various public collections including

Tate Britain Tate Britain, known from 1897 to 1932 as the National Gallery of British Art and from 1932 to 2000 as the Tate Gallery, is an art museum on Millbank in the City of Westminster in London, England. It is part of the Tate network of galleries in En ...

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

;

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; British Museum, London;

Fitzwilliam Museum The Fitzwilliam Museum is the art and antiquities University museum, museum of the University of Cambridge. It is located on Trumpington Street opposite Fitzwilliam Street in central Cambridge. It was founded in 1816 under the will of Richard ...

, Cambridge; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, as well as a number of private collections around the world. Houghton is best known for wood-engravings but also produced a number of oil paintings and watercolours (usually based upon earlier wood-engravings), many of his wife and children. He also wrote a little poetry which was published in his lifetime. When still a child, a shot fired from a toy cannon left him blind in one eye, and unable to sustain his concentration when painting large works for exhibition at the

Royal Academy The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is an art institution based in Burlington House in Piccadilly London, England. Founded in 1768, it has a unique position as an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects. Its ...

.Arthur Boyd Houghton - The Brother and Sister of the Artist playing Chess
British Paintings blog. He died in London.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Houghton, Arthur Boyd 1836 births 1875 deaths 19th-century British painters British male painters 19th-century British illustrators 19th-century British male artists