Artist: Herbert Railton (English, 1857-1910)
Title: The East Front, Haddon Hall
Medium: Hand pulled copper plate etching on wove paper (English, 1857-1910).
Signature: Signed in plate, lower right
Dimensions: Image Size 5 x 6 7/8 inches.
Framed Dimensions: Approximately 13 x 14 inches.
Framing: This piece has been professionally matted and framed using all new materials.
Haddon Hall is an English country house on the River Wye near Bakewell, Derbyshire, a former seat of the Dukes of Rutland. It is currently the home of Lord Edward Manners and his family. In form a medieval manor house, it has been described as “the most complete and most interesting house of [its] period”. The origins of the hall date to the 11th century. The current medieval and Tudor hall includes additions added at various stages between the 13th and the 17th centuries. The Vernon family acquired the Manor of Haddon by a 12th-century marriage between Sir Richard de Vernon and Alice Avenell, daughter of William Avenell II. Four centuries later, in 1563, Dorothy Vernon, the daughter and heiress of Sir George Vernon, married John Manners, the second son of Thomas Manners, 1st Earl of Rutland. A legend grew up in the 19th century that Dorothy and Manners eloped. The legend has been made into novels, dramatisations and other works of fiction. She nevertheless inherited the Hall, and their grandson, also John Manners, inherited the Earldom in 1641 from a distant cousin. His son, another John Manners, was made 1st Duke of Rutland in 1703. In the 20th century, another John Manners, 9th Duke of Rutland, made a life’s work of restoring the hall.
Railton was born in Pleasington, near Blackburn, Lancashire, and educated at Mechlin in Belgium and Ampleforth College in North Yorkshire (England). He trained as an architect at the firm of W.S. Varley in Blackburn. He joined the local literary club where he met artist Charles Haworth, who became his mentor, and gave him further instruction in working in black and white. After his drawings of a railway accident at Blackburn station (1881) were published in the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, Railton went on to become one of the leading illustrators of his day. He moved to London and married Frances, another illustrator – they had one child, Ione, who also became an illustrator. Railton provided many black and white illustrations for magazines and books – including editions of books by famous authors such Thomas Hood (The Haunted House), Oliver Goldsmith, Henry Fielding, Samuel Johnson etc. and travel guides. Railton died of pneumonia in 1910, aged 53.