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Theodor von Holst: the bridge between the Pre-Raphaelites and the Romantics

‘Holst’ is a well-known surname in the UK made famous by Gustav Theodore Holst - a renowned composer, arranger and teacher best known for his orchestral suite The Planets. However, not many people know that he shared his middle name with an early 19th century artist Theodor von Holst (his grand-uncle) whose name fell into obscurity despite an impact he had on the British art representing the link between earlier Romantic artists and the Pre-Raphaelites.


Painting by Theodor von Holst
Gustav von Holst and His Brother, Theodore. Cheltenham Art Gallery & Museum

Von Holst was born on 3rd September 1810 in London where he also died on the 14th February 1844. His father was a teacher of music from Riga and his mother was a runaway Russian noblewoman. Growing up in London he showed skill and talent from an early age and proceeded to study antiques at the British museum. He was admitted to the Royal Academy around 1820 and became a favourite pupil of Henry Fuseli who wielded influence on his art. Many works by von Holst are still wrongly attributed to Fuseli.


His other patron was the then President of the Royal Academy - Sir Thomas Lawrence, to whom he sold a drawing for three guineas aged 10. The President later approached him for an unusual task of executing erotic drawings for George IV. Von Holst’s letters to his parents indicate that the family may not have approved of his career as an artist but throughout his life he 'followed the bent of his own genius, which neither public direction, the offer of commissions, nor privations could alter’ and proceeded with his own path.

Painting Fairy Lovers by Theodor von Holst
The Fairy Lovers. Tate Britain

Holst was known for his gloomy, Gothic subjects often attributed by his contemporaries to his ‘natural disposition inclining to melancholy’ and the titles and characters of his works attribute to such view. He widely exhibited at the RA and the British Institution and never showed less than three, for the most part large sized paintings a year. However, he did not exhibit at all in 1830, 1831, 1835 and 1844. He often worked in isolation and only achieved recognition towards the end of his short life with his painting The Raising of Jairus’s Daughter 1841 which is now lost. For the work he was awarded 50 guineas by the Directors of the British Institution.


Many of his works and studies remain lost or misattributed but his paintings have been undergoing a revival and are now being included in exhibitions focused on Romanticism and Pre-Raphaelite art. His connection with the Pre-Raphaelites is a curious one. The Brotherhood was aware of his works and Dante Gabriel Rossetti even collected his sketchbooks but he died when the artists were too young to have met him. Rossetti once wrote to Ford Madox Brown that on the walls on his room he only had a reproduction of Brown’s work together with an engraving of ‘that great painter von Holst’. The Brotherhood was also known to frequent Campbell’s Scotch Stores in Beak Street - a restaurant where pictures by Theodor von Holst hang and which they visited for that reason. Max Browne – who is instrumental in the ongoing revival of von Holst - hypothesized that his works inspired many paintings by the Pre-Raphaelites including Bocca Baciata by Rossetti and The Bridesmaid by John Everett Millais.


Painting The Bride by Theodor von Holst
The Bride. Tate Britain

Von Holst’s paintings were typically inspired by literary works, for instance by such writers as T. A. Hoffmann, Victor Hugo, Walter Scott and Bulwer-Lytt. His most famous work The Bride illustrates Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem Ginevra (1821) in which a Florentine girl is forced to marry an elderly nobleman and is later found dead on her bridal bed after bidding farewell to her young lover.


The paintings illustrates lines 9-12 from the opening stanza of the poem:


Ginevra from the nuptial altar went; The vows to which her lips had sworn assent Rung in her brain still with a jarring din, Deafening the lost intelligence within.


The painting has a brilliant gold background sometimes associated with Orthodox icons, perhaps an ode to his Russian mother or Latvian father. Composition is more reminiscent of early Italian and Netherlandish paintings. The sad bride is playing with a lock of her hair and the small cupid on the left hand-corner of the work is almost mocking her. She is wearing a serpent bracelet often associated with temptation.


The artist made three versions of this image: an earlier experimental picture; the work now at Tate Britain which was exhibited at the British Institution in 1842; and a larger copy commissioned by Lord Lansdowne which was hung in his breakfast room at his house in Berkley Square, London. Rossetti described this painting as ‘a most beautiful work by him - a female head or half figure’ and Rossetti’s own sketch of the work has recently been discovered most likely based on the copy owned by Lord Lansdowne.


Painting by Theodor von Holst
The Wish. Yale Centre for British Art


The Wish is a striking image almost disturbing to look at. It shows a femme fatale dealing cards sitting against a glowing orange-red background. Her dress and hands are highlighted and her pearl jewel is lit up. The application of the paint in a way of highlighting small details and giving them a sparkling feeling was greatly admired by the Pre-Raphaelites. Some art historians believe that The Wish inspired Millais’ The Bridesmaid. Rossetti’s first widely published poem The Card-Dealer was based on the Holst’s work.


Illustration from 'Frankenstein' by Mary Shelley
Illustration from 'Frankenstein' by Mary Shelley

For many Holst’s genius is most evident in his famed illustrations of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in 1831. His were the first published illustrations for the novel in the edition which identified the author by her name for the first time. Holst’s design has since been used in countless reprints and was even used as a television studio back-drop for a Southbank Show.


Holst died at the age of thirty-four of liver disease. He achieved a degree of commercial success towards the end of his life with the success of his centrally placed female subjects, such as The Wish and The Bride, which were appreciated by the collectors. His untimely death contributed to the fell of his name into obscurity. It has been suggested that his heavy reliance on German subjects and the inspiration he derived from German artists had an impact of distancing him from the English artists and British art history - an attitude even further complicated by the events of they early 20th century.


Many of his works are now either lost, scattered across various museums and private collections or remain misattributed. His first retrospective was held in the 1990s, but only recently his works have been included by Tate and other major institutions in their exhibitions. Art historian Max Browne has played a key role in resurrecting the life and works of von Holst and we can expect more exhibitions to feature his works in the future and perhaps new discoveries associated with him to be unearthed. Von Holst offers us a glimpse into his own world inspired by Fuseli, Holst’s literature interests and his unique interpretation of the events and tastes around him.

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