Sir Samuel Luke Fildes RAThe Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London, England. The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment...
(October 3 1843 – February 28 1927) was an
EnglishEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the North Sea to the east, with the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
painter and illustrator born at
LiverpoolLiverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
and trained in the
South KensingtonThe Royal College of Art is the world’s only wholly postgraduate university of art and design, offering the degrees of MA, MPhil and PhD...
and
Royal AcademyThe Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London, England. The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment...
schools.
At the age of seventeen Luke Fildes became a student at the Warrington School of Art. Fildes moved to the South Kensington Art school where he met
Hubert von HerkomerSir Hubert von Herkomer , British painter of German descent.He was also a pioneering film-director and a composer.-Life:Herkomer was born at Waal, in Bavaria...
and
Frank HollFrank Holl , English painter, was born in London, and was educated chiefly at University College School.He was a grandson of William Holl, an engraver of note, and the son of Francis Holl, ARA, another engraver, whose profession he originally intended to follow...
. All three men became influenced by the work of
Frederick WalkerFrederick Walker may refer to:*Frederick Walker , explorer*Frederick Walker , painter and illustrator*Frederic John Walker , British naval officer*Frederic Walker , cricketer...
, the leader of the social realist movement in Britain.
Fildes shared his grandmother's concern for the poor and in 1869 joined the staff of
The GraphicThe Graphic was a British illustrated newspaper, first published on 4 December 1869 by Illustrated Newspapers, Ltd. It continued to be published weekly under this title until 23 April 1932 and then changed title to The National Graphic between 28 April and 14 July 1932; it then ceased publication...
newspaper, an illustrated weekly edited by the social reformer,
William Luson ThomasWilliam Luson Thomas was an English wood engraver and the founder of various British newspapers.He worked as an engraver in Paris and also as an assistant to the well-known engraver William James Linton....
.
Sir Samuel Luke Fildes RAThe Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London, England. The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment...
(October 3 1843 – February 28 1927) was an
EnglishEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the North Sea to the east, with the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
painter and illustrator born at
LiverpoolLiverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
and trained in the
South KensingtonThe Royal College of Art is the world’s only wholly postgraduate university of art and design, offering the degrees of MA, MPhil and PhD...
and
Royal AcademyThe Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London, England. The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment...
schools.
At the age of seventeen Luke Fildes became a student at the Warrington School of Art. Fildes moved to the South Kensington Art school where he met
Hubert von HerkomerSir Hubert von Herkomer , British painter of German descent.He was also a pioneering film-director and a composer.-Life:Herkomer was born at Waal, in Bavaria...
and
Frank HollFrank Holl , English painter, was born in London, and was educated chiefly at University College School.He was a grandson of William Holl, an engraver of note, and the son of Francis Holl, ARA, another engraver, whose profession he originally intended to follow...
. All three men became influenced by the work of
Frederick WalkerFrederick Walker may refer to:*Frederick Walker , explorer*Frederick Walker , painter and illustrator*Frederic John Walker , British naval officer*Frederic Walker , cricketer...
, the leader of the social realist movement in Britain.
Fildes shared his grandmother's concern for the poor and in 1869 joined the staff of
The GraphicThe Graphic was a British illustrated newspaper, first published on 4 December 1869 by Illustrated Newspapers, Ltd. It continued to be published weekly under this title until 23 April 1932 and then changed title to The National Graphic between 28 April and 14 July 1932; it then ceased publication...
newspaper, an illustrated weekly edited by the social reformer,
William Luson ThomasWilliam Luson Thomas was an English wood engraver and the founder of various British newspapers.He worked as an engraver in Paris and also as an assistant to the well-known engraver William James Linton....
. Fildes shared Thomas' belief in the power of visual images to change public opinion on subjects such as poverty and injustice. Thomas hoped that the images in the
Graphic would result in individual acts of charity and collective social action.
In the first edition of the
Graphic magazine that appeared in December 1869, Luke Fildes was asked to provide an illustration to accompany an article on the Houseless Poor Act, a new measure that allowed some of those people out of work shelter for a night in the casual ward of a workhouse. The picture produced by Fildes showed a line of homeless people applying for tickets to stay overnight in the workhouse. The engraving, entitled
Houseless and Hungry, was seen by
John Everett MillaisSir John Everett Millais, 1st Baronet, PRA was an English painter and illustrator and one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.-Early life:...
who brought it to the attention of
Charles DickensCharles John Huffam Dickens FRSA , pen-name "Boz", was the most popular English novelist of the Victorian era and one of the most popular of all time. He created some of literature's most memorable characters. His novels and short stories have never gone out of print...
, who was so impressed he immediately commissioned Fildes to illustrate
The Mystery of Edwin DroodThe Mystery of Edwin Drood is the final novel by Charles Dickens. The novel was left unfinished at the time of Dickens' death and thus how it might have ended remains unknown. The novel is named after Edwin Drood but it mostly tells the story of his uncle, a choirmaster named John Jasper, who is...
.
Fildes soon became a popular artist and by 1870 he had given up working from the Graphic and had turned his full attention to oil painting. He took rank among the ablest English painters, with
The Casual Ward (1874),
The Widower (1876),
The Village Wedding (1883),
An Al-fresco Toilette (1889); and
The Doctor (1891), now in the National Gallery of British Art. He also painted a number of pictures of
VenetianVenice is a city in northern Italy, the capital of the region Veneto, a population of 271,367 . Together with Padua, the city is included in the Padua-Venice Metropolitan Area . The city historically was an independent nation...
life and many notable portraits, among them the coronation portraits of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra. He was elected an associate of the
Royal AcademyThe Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London, England. The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment...
in 1879, and academician in 1887; and was knighted in 1906. Fildes produced a large number of caricatures for
Vanity Fair under the
nom de crayon "ELF". He and Henry Woods were regarded as leaders of the Neo-Venetian school. In 1874 Luke Fildes married Fanny Woods, who was also an artist and the sister of Henry Woods.
His son, Sir
Paul FildesSir Paul Gordon Fildes OBE FRS was a British pathologist and microbiologist who worked at Porton Down during the Second World War....
, was an eminent scientist.
Modern Politics
In 1949, Fildes'
The Doctor was used by the
American Medical AssociationThe American Medical Association , founded in 1847 and incorporated 1897, is the largest association of physicians and medical students in the United States. While its membership has declined in recent years, it claims approximately 20% of practicing physicians as members...
in a campaign against a proposal for nationalized medical care put forth by President
Harry S. TrumanHarry S. Truman was the 33rd President of the United States . As President Franklin D. Roosevelt's third vice-president and the 34th Vice President of the United States, he succeeded to the presidency on April 12, 1945, when President Roosevelt died less than three months after beginning his...
. The image was used in posters and brochures along with the slogan, "Keep Politics Out of this Picture" implying that involvement of the government in medical care would negatively affect the quality of care. 65,000 posters of
The Doctor were displayed, which helped to raise public skepticism for the nationalized health care campaign
http://correspondents.theatlantic.com/abraham_verghese/2009/06/the_ama_conflicted_in_its_interests.php.
External links