Details

Name

Harrington Mann

Brief Biography

1864-1937, Scottish

Occupation

Artist

Description

Glasgow Boy artist Harrington Mann was born in Glasgow, the son of John Mann (1827–1910), a chartered accountant, and Mary Newton Harrington (1834–1917), a novelist. His grandfather John Mann (1796-1827) was also an artist. Harrington Mann studied for 5 years at the Slade School of Art in London from 1880 under Alphonse Legros and William Strang, and for a winter in Paris 1886-87 at the Academie Julian under Gustave Boulanger and Jules Josef Lefebvre, where he was awarded a 2-year scholarship to Italy. He exhibited at the Royal Academy in London from 1885. In 1888 he was commissioned to paint murals for the Ewing Gilmour Institute for Girls in Alexandria, near Glasgow, designed by John Archibald Campbell.

From 1891 to 1894 Mann shared a studio with Glasgow Boy painter and stained glass designer David Gauld (1865–1936) at 31 St Vincent Place. During that time they expended a large percentage of their creative energies on the freelance designing of stained glass. Most of this work was executed primarily (though not exclusively) for J. & W. Guthrie (later Guthrie & Wells). Of the two artists, Gauld appears to have been the first to design for the Guthries; he remained with them the longest and produced the largest amount of work. Mann produced a comparatively small amount of work but of outstanding quality. By 1900 he had abandoned designing for glass and his unpublished autobiography makes no reference either to it or to his close friendship with Gauld. Whatever the reason for the abrupt end of this association (Gauld moved to new premises at 138 West George Street in 1895) while it lasted it was a vitally important one.

As with many of the Glasgow Boys painters Mann turned increasingly to portrait painting in the 1890s. In 1893 he married the interior decorator Florence ‘Dolly’ Sabine-Pasley (1871-1956). They had three daughters, including Cathleen and Mona, who appear in several of his paintings. Cathleen (later Douglas) (1896–1959) became a renowned painter of portraits, still life and flowers – there are three paintings by her in Glasgow Museums’ collection. In the 1890s Mann painted in the fishing village Staithes in Yorkshire where he met other painters, including the Knights and Mayors.

In 1900 Mann moved to London where he became a popular society portrait painter, particularly gaining a reputation as a sensitive child portraitist. He painted members of the British Royal family, including George V. He also had a studio in New York. Christian Brinton wrote of Mann in The Century Magazine in March 1908 that he had: ‘always showed singular versatility, having devoted himself by turns to decorative cartoons for stained glass, to mural painting, landscape, genre, and portraiture […] While his likenesses usually maintain a high level of attainment, it is in certain less formal portrait groups that Mr. Mann reveals perhaps the most sympathetic and attractive phase of his talent’ (vol. 75, no. 5, pp. 800-801). Mann exhibited at the International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers in London from its founding in 1898, a society of which the American artist James McNeill Whistler was President and many Glasgow Boys sat on the executive committee. He was also a founder member of the National Portrait Society in 1911. He worked in England and United States 1900-1937.