Death Notice - The Times Thursday September 30^th 1926

ALLINGHAM-On 28^th Sptember, after a few hours illness Helen Allingham RWS, at the home of her old friend Mrs Daffurn, Valewood, Haslemere.  Service at Woking Crematorium on Saturday at 11 o’ clock.

MRS ALLINGHAM 

We regret to record that Mrs Helen Allingham, the water-colour painter, died on Tuesday, after a few hours illness at the home of an old friend at Haslemere. She had just completed her 78^th year.

Mrs Allingham was the daughter of Doctor A H Paterson, and was born on September 26 1848. In 1874, when she was 26, she married William Allingham, the Irish poet, who was then 50, and with him she passed 15 years of a happy married life, till his death in 1889. They had 2 sons and a daughter. In her girlhood Mrs Allingham gave signs of artistic talent, and after training at the Royal Academy school, she began to work professionally drawing in black and white for the GRAPHIC and CORNHILL, and making by her watercolours a sufficient impression to be chosen an Associate of the Royal Water Colour Society just after her marriage, becoming a full member in 1890. For about 50 years she was a regular exhibitor, and she sent three pictures to the exhibition last year. 

She was a great favourite of those who like idyllic scenes of country life, carefully painted. She had affinities with the Pre-Raphaelites, some of whom were close friends of her husband, whose books they sometimes illustrated; but she never emulated their historic visions of the lofty imaginations of their leaders, contenting herself with exact renderings of English rural scenery, Surrey, pleasant children and the cottages round about her home near Witley, Haslemere. Ruskin used sometimes to speak of her with exaggerated admiration, but to many quieter folk her drawings at the Society’s rooms, or in separate exhibitions which she organised from time to time, gave real and legitimate pleasure. She illustrated amongst other books “The Homes of Tennyson” written by her brother Mr H A Paterson, the novelist, and after her husband’s death she edited three volumes of his correspondence and other prose writings.

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