Carl Almquist
Template:Short description Script error: No such module "about". Template:Use dmy dates Template:EngvarB
Carl Almquist (1848 – 1924) was a Swedish-born stained-glass artist whose professional life was spent entirely in Britain. He was a pupil of Henry Holiday and became one of the two chief designers for the well-known Lancaster firm of Shrigley and Hunt. He was in large measure responsible for establishing their late Pre-Raphaelite or Aesthetic style. Though largely neglected by 20th-century art historians he has more recently been acclaimed as a genius, and as one of the leading late-Victorian stained-glass designers.Template:Sfn
Career
Carl Almquist was born in 1848 in Almby, near Örebro, Sweden. Wanting to study stained-glass production and not being able to do so in Sweden, he travelled to England at the age of 22 under the sponsorship of Template:Ill, a local architecture teacher.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn He became a pupil, and soon an employee, of the Pre-Raphaelite artist Henry Holiday, one of the leading stained-glass designers of the day, while also finding work with various other studios, including Burlison and Grylls, Heaton, Butler and Bayne, and James Powell and Sons.Template:Sfn
In December 1873 he began to get work from the new Lancaster firm of Shrigley and Hunt, both as a stained-glass designer and a decorative artist in other media, and in 1876 he became a permanent employee and moved to Lancaster. Here the firm's founder, Arthur William Hunt, and his two chief designers, Almquist and Edward Holmes Jewitt, worked as a close team, drawing particularly on the Aesthetic techniques Almquist had derived from Holiday and from Harry Ellis Wooldridge of the James Powell studio; they developed a house style of subtle colours (becoming richer in later years) and delicate drawing which defined Shrigley and Hunt until well into the 20th century.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Almquist soon found he much preferred life in London, so to keep the company together Hunt opened a London branch for him in 1878.Template:Sfn Almquist was still not finished with education, and from 1878 to 1884 attended the West London School of Art.[1]Template:Sfn This culminated with his being awarded a travelling scholarship to spend two months in Italy studying decorative art.[2] As the years passed his style developed, with the Pre-Raphaelite influence becoming less obvious and those of Botticelli, Dürer and contemporary Scottish glass designers more so.Template:Sfn Almquist designed many windows for locations in Scotland, Wales, the Home Counties, Yorkshire, and above all in the north-west of England, and there are scattered examples elsewhere.Template:Sfn Though he never returned to SwedenTemplate:Sfn he designed several of the stained glass windows for the St Nicholas Church, Örebro, then being restored by his old friend Adolf Kjellström,[3] and later for the Olaus Petri Church in the same town.Template:Sfn[4] Stylistic evidence also suggests that while employed by Shrigley and Hunt Almquist did some freelance work for the firm of Burlison and Grylls.Template:Sfn
In 1920, suffering from failing eyesight, he retired to the seaside resort of Hove, Sussex. He continued to send designs to Shrigley and Hunt and was paid for them, but they were never used. He died at Hove in 1924.[5]Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn
List of works
Script error: No such module "Labelled list hatnote".
Footnotes
References
- Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
- Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
- Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".