William Henry Margetson | Victorian-era painter

William Henry Margetson (1860-1940) is a British painter noted for his pictures of very beautiful girls, typically alone and large on the canvas, and typically with short hair and hats when they are modern subjects.

He studied at the South Kensington Schools, and then at the Royal Academy, exhibiting there from 1885.

He lived at Wallingford on Thames. As well as modern girls and portraits, Margetson also produced a few religious pictures, and some allegorical and classical/ancient ones–for example a Cleopatra, fetchingly attired, with attendants in an Alma-Tadema setting, 1890.

Allegorical classical subjects also include The Sea Hath its Pearls, (a girl in diaphanous drapes) in the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Australia, and the much reproduced Who Strays in Love's Domain showing three such girls and an ugly Cupid on the beach, 1904.

An example of a religious work is the very sweet St Mary at the Loom, at the Victoria Art Gallery, Bath. Margetson also did some black and white illustrative work in line and wash early in his career, but this seems workmanlike rather than inspired, and what I have seen bears no relation to his painted subjects.

However, he did do some rather good coloured illustrations after the turn of the century.

His wife, nee Helen Hatton, was also an artist.