Charles Hazlewood Shannon

Identity:

Charles Hazlewood Shannon was a painter and lithographer.

Life:

Shannon trained as a wood-engraver at the City and Guilds Technical Art School in Lambeth, London. There he met the painter and designer Charles Ricketts. In 1888 they took over Whistler's house, The Vale, in Chelsea.

Shannon was particularly concerned with experimenting with lithographic techniques and woodcut illustrations. Influenced by A. H. Mackmurdo and William Morris, he and Ricketts set up a small printing press, producing art journals and books, including their own magazine The Dial and Oscar Wilde's A House of Pomegranates (1891) and The Sphinx (1894): Wilde called Shannon the 'Orchid' because of his effete and mannered disposition. He also was a collector and bought a lithograph by Whistler from the Fine Art Society in 1895.

Both Ricketts and Shannon were members of the International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers, which elected Whistler its Chairman in February 1898 and its President in April 1898. Shannon painted Ricketts' portrait in this year, Man in the Inverness Cape (National Portrait Gallery, London). The muted tonality owes much to the work of Whistler. Both Ricketts and Shannon were mentioned in an 1892 notebook of Whistler's. Shannon, who designed exotic fans for himself, bought Design for a fan m0392. Whistler wrote to Lavery, 'I have always liked Shannon very much... I feel most sympathetically towards him - and I dont think it possible that we could have a better man or a nicer fellow with us' ([10/12 April 1898], GUW #09992).

Shannon was elected an A.R.A. in 1911 and R.A. in 1920. With Ricketts, he formed a substantial collection of Egyptian and Classical antiquities, Persian ceramics, Japanese prints, drawings by Titian, Tintoretto and Rembrandt, and works by contemporary artists. The majority of their collection was left to the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.

Bibliography:

; Ricketts, C., A Catalogue of Mr Shannon's Lithographs, London, 1902; Walker, R. A., The Lithographs of Charles Shannon with a Catalogue of Lithographs Issued Between the Years 1904 and 1918, London, 1920; Rothenstein, J., The Artists of the 1890s, London, 1928; Delaney, P., The Lithographs of Charles Shannon, London, 1978; Delaney, P., 'Whistler, Shannon and the Revival of Lithography as Art', Nineteenth Century, vol. 4, 1978, pp. 75-80; Darracott, J. (ed.), All for Art: The Ricketts and Shannon Collection, Cambridge, 1979; Darracott, J., The World of Charles Ricketts, London, 1980; The Getty website; Cooper, Emmanuel, 'Charles Shannon', The Grove Dictionary of Art Online, ed. L. Macy.