Harold Squire
Client
Harold Squire (1881–1959) was born in Valparaiso, Chile, and came to England at the age of ten. He studied at the Slade School of Art and at Newlyn under Stanhope Forbes. 1 He exhibited with the New English Art Club in 1913, becoming a member in 1919, and with the London Group at the Goupil Gallery in 1914. 2 In 1926 his work was included in an exhibition of flower paintings at the Claridge Gallery, and in the same year he acquired Springhead, an estate in Dorset where he created a garden. 3 In 1939 he built The Hundred at Henfield, Sussex, where he lived until his death in 1959. 4 He left an estate valued at £35,045, and made a bequest of £1000 to the Artists' Benevolent Fund, to aid 'young, needy artist painters'. 5
Squire was a member of the Council of the Arts League of Service, 6 and it was through this organisation that he met Mackintosh. 7 The Exhibition of Practical Arts organised by the League in 1919 included a number of rugs hand-woven to his designs, and in the same exhibition he showed a 'Design for Curtains for a Travelling Theatre' – no doubt intended for the League's own touring players. 8
Notes:
1: Grant M. Waters, Dictionary of British Artists Working 1900–1950, Eastbourne: Eastbourne Fine Art, 1975.
2: The Times, 1 December 1913, p. 71; Grant M. Waters, Dictionary of British Artists Working 1900–1950, Eastbourne: Eastbourne Fine Art, 1975; Athenaeum, 14 March 1914, p. 387.
3: The Times, 29 November 1926, p. 17; Springhead Trust website: www.springheadtrust.co.uk/gardens_history [accessed 16 March 2013].
4: The Times, 20 June 1960, p. 8.
5: The Times, 13 May 1960, p. 8.
6: Bulletin of the Arts League of Service, [1920]. Copy in the National Art Library, PP.18.D.
7: The Hunterian, University of Glasgow: photocopy of letter from Harold Squire to Thomas Howarth, 26 January 1946 (not accessioned).
8: London, Twenty-One Gallery: Arts League of Service Exhibition of Practical Arts, 17 November–6 December 1919 (11, 12, 14–17).
