Designer Biography

Charlotte Spiers

Born:

Died:

See items in our stock by Charlotte Spiers

Spiers early career was spent at the Minton Kensington Gore workshops where she worked as a freelance artist in partnership with another successful Minton artist Ellen Welby, and exhibited regularly at the Society of Women Artists, New Gallery, Royal Academy, Royal Society of British Artist’s, Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours, Royal Society of Artists and others.

Howell & James held china-painting exhibitions in their Regent Street galleries from 1876 to the mid-1880s.  The exhibitions, which were judged by members of the Royal Academy, had the patronage of royalty and aristocracy.  There were 2 categories – amateur and professional – and prizes and commendations were awarded in each. The exhibitions drew large crowds and were covered in the press in publications such as the Magazine of Art and the Queen.

Charlotte Spiers was a regular – and very well regarded -- exhibitor in the professional category of the H&J china painting exhibitions, and frequently won prizes and commendations for her work. In 1878 she won first prize “for her boldly-painted group of irises” [“The Exhibition of Paintings on China,” Magazine of Art 1 (1878): 178]. She also received some commendations for other (unspecified) work. The entries in this exhibition were those being sent to the 1878 Paris Exposition Universelle [“English Ceramic Art at the Paris Exhibition,” Queen March 16, 1878: 206]. They were included as part of Howell & James’s exhibit stand there, which was designed by Lewis F. Day.

This was followed by another success in 1879: “The first prize for heads falls to Miss C.H. Spiers for a well-painted study entitled ‘Diana Vernon,’ and the same talented artist has secured the first prize for ornaments for her two plates painted respectively with ‘Chrysanthemums’ and ‘Hollyhocks.’ The former subject is admirably handled, and is an excellent example of flower-painting” [“The Fourth Annual Exhibition of Paintings on China,” Magazine of Art 2 (1879): 271].  In his retrospective article on H&J’s china painting exhibitions, Cosmo Monkhouse commented that Spiers chose “handsome, healthy and natural faces, gentle and refined,” and noted that the Diana Vernon portrait head was “more severe in design, the more preoccupied in thought”; he added that Spiers produced “beautiful work, thoroughly English and pure, and masterly also, if such an epithet can be applied to designs which are feminine in the best sense of that word” [Cosmo Monkhouse, “The ‘Royal Academy’ of China-Painting,” Magazine of Art 7 (1884-5): 248-9; illus. 248].

In 1880 (the 5th exhibition) she exhibited a china plate with poppies, tiger lilies and a bird, and she received a special H&J prize for this entry [Magazine of Art 3 (1880): 392; illus. 392