Percy Bigland Explained

Percy Bigland
Birth Place:Birkenhead
Death Date: (aged 68)
Death Place:Jordans, Buckinghamshire
Education:Sidcot School
Known For:Portrait, genre and landscape painting
Notable Works:W. E. Gladstone (1809–1898)
Father:Edwin Bigland
Relatives:Alfred Bigland (brother)

Percy Bigland (1858–1926) was an English portrait painter.

Life

Bigland was the son of Edwin Bigland, of Birkenhead in 1856. He was educated like his brother at the Sidcot School as his family were Quakers. Bigland studied art in Munich in Germany for seven years before returning to England where he lived in London, Liverpool, Beaconsfield and Buckinghamshire. He was a regular exhibitor until 1925 at institutions in London and the provinces.

Bigland painted his elder brother, Alfred Bigland who was an M.P. This portrait is in the Williamson Art Gallery in Birkenhead.[1] [2] His most notable subject was the Prime Minister Gladstone, but he also went to America three times to include the department store owner Isaac H Clothier, Swarthmore College dean Elizabeth Powell Bond[3] and landowner and philanthropist William Poole Bancroft in his list of sitters.[4]

In 1891 he was elected to the Royal Society of Portrait Painters in 1891 and in 1893 he painted Elizabeth Hanbury who was then 100 years old.[5]

Bigland died aged 68[6] in 1926.[7]

Legacy

Bigland has twenty paintings in British national collections.

Notes and References

  1. https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/alfred-bigland-18551936-mp-68383 Portrait of Alfred Bigland
  2. http://www.whistler.arts.gla.ac.uk/correspondence/people/biog/?bid=Bigl_P&initial=B Biographical note on Percy Bigland, Alfred's brother, in notes to The correspondence of James McNeill Whistler
  3. http://www.swarthmore.edu/library/friends/ead/5014ebon.xml Elizabeth Powell Bond
  4. http://findingaids.hagley.org/xtf/view?docId=ead/2424.xml Woodlawn Trustees, Inc. records
  5. Hanbury, Elizabeth . 2.
  6. http://www.gac.culture.gov.uk/work.aspx?obj=35277 Percy Bigland
  7. https://www.artsignaturedictionary.com/artist/percy.bigland Percy Bigland