Leicester Chronicler

Tempus omnia revelat
Time reveals all


Listening to the historic heartbeat of the City of Leicester and its environs in the English East Midlands

A reflection of past and present thoughts and aspirations

George Samuel Elgood
1851-1943

George Samuel Elgood was born in 1851 in Leicester, and educated at private schools in the town and at Bloxham.

He is regarded by many as the greatest master of the garden picture.  He was a professional water colourist, a member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolour, a painter of landscapes, Italian scenery and buildings.  He held no less than twelve one-man exhibitions at the Fine Art Society before the First World War, and most of the works exhibited were of gardens.  His output was greater than that of any other garden painter, with the possible exception of Beatrice Parsons.  Elgood was also an extremely knowledgeable gardener himself.  He held strong personal views about gardens and their design; he also shared many of Gertrude Jekyll’s ideas about design and colour, which made him the ideal illustrator for her books. 

Elgood came from a Leicester family, and first studied art at the Leicester School of Art under Wilmot Pilsbury, himself a talented watercolour landscape painter.  He then moved to London, to study architectural drawing at the South Kensington School. here he worked in the Architectural Department and spent much of his spare time studying the treasures of the Museum.  He returned to Leicester on his father's death to run the family business, and it was not until the early 1880s that Elgood was able to devote himself to painting full-time.  He married Mary Clepham, a lady of some means, and also an artist, and together they travelled the country painting buildings, landscapes and flowers.  In 1881 he travelled to Italy, the country that was to have a profound effect on his art.  He returned there every year and in 1907 published Italian Gardens. 

He had a strong preference for old and historic gardens, such as Penshurst, Levens, Melbourne, Cleeve Priory and Montacute.  All these gardens appear it what was to be his greatest book, Some English Gardens, first published in 1904, with commentary on each garden by Gertude Jekyll.  His genius as a garden watercolourist lay in his extraordinary ability of combining form and colour in a harmonious and natural way.  His work always shows a clear sense of design, reflecting his love of Italian gardens, and his architectural training.  He chose his viewpoint carefully, making the most of the features he wanted to accentuate.  When it came to painting flowers, Elgood showed his finely developed sense of colour – he painted many herbaceous borders and flower gardens filled with a profusion of flowers, such as Blyborough, Crathes, Kellie and Knockwood – his own garden in Kent.  His preference, however, was for soft, pale colours, and he was also keenly aware of the crucial importance of colour combinations and gradations.  In contrast to the bright borders of Beatrice Parsons or Lilian Stannard, Elgood’s colours are muted but marvellously subtle and atmospheric, and bathed in a delicate blue-grey haze. 

He was elected a member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water-colours (R.I.) in 1882, and of the Royal Institute of Oil Painters a few years later (R.O.I.). He painted in Italy and France as well as in England, and eventually became best known as one of the pioneer painters of formal gardens, though he still painted a variety of other subjects. He spent several weeks at Pompeii, and painted also at Taormina, Girgenti (Agrigentum), and other ancient and mediaeval sites in Italy and Sicily.

He published two books, Some English Gardens (in collaboration with Miss Gertrude Jekyll), and Italian Gardens, each illustrated by about fifty colour-reproductions from his pictures. Reproductions of many others have been used to illustrate books by Dean Hole, Alfred Austin, and Maeterlinck; and various books on gardens and gardening.

In the course of his study of the Formal Garden he gathered a considerable library of books, old and new, on Gardens and Architecture, as well as Archæology and Heraldry, a number of which, according to his wishes have been given to the libraries of societies in which he was interested.
 
In later years, when he did less painting, he developed a small formal garden at his home, Knockwood, an old timbered house near Tenterden. He also took a great interest in the work of the Kent and Leicestershire Archæological Societies, but always with a strong leaning to the artistic side of their work.