Augustus J. C. Hare
Date of birth: 1834
Date of death: 1903
Category: writer
Identity:
Augustus J. C. Hare was a painter and travel writer.
Life:
Hare, who specialised in landscape watercolour paintings, exhibited his work in 1902 at Leicester Gallery. His Walks in London (1878) contained a flattering reference to Whistler's Harmony in Blue and Gold: The Peacock Room y178.
Following Whistler's bankruptcy in 1879, Hare recorded that he was included among a large group that visited Whistler's White House in Chelsea on 13 May 1879 in order to see a collection of his pictures. However, only one was on display, a satirical painting of F. R. Leyland, The Loves of the Lobsters y209. He believed that Whistler, who looked 'most strange and uncanny' with his quiff of white hair 'waving on his forehead', sought to foil mindless admirers: 'People admire like sheep his pictures in the Grosvenor Gallery, following each other's lead because it is the fashion.' However, it is evident that Whistler also intended to spite his creditors.
Bibliography:
Pennell, Elizabeth Robins, and Joseph Pennell, The Life of James McNeill Whistler, 2 vols, London and Philadelphia, 1908 ; Johnson, J., and Anna Greutzner, Dictionary of British Artists 1880-1940, Woodbridge, 1980.
