This painting was discovered for sale in an antique shop in Sweden by the Curator of the DMAG who recognised the name of the artist.
James L. C. Docharty (1868-1928) was educated at the Glasgow Institution for the Deaf and Dumb. He was employed as an artist by the Glasgow Weekly Mail and exhibited paintings regularly throughout Scotland.
Four watercolour paintings in the DMAG are by James Brindle, one of Preston’s best known artists. Brindle was born in Preston in 1893 and was deaf from birth and was educated at the Royal Cross Deaf and Dumb School in Preston. He initially worked in a cotton mill before becoming a landscape and marine painter.
The four paintings were donated to the DMAG by Anthony Boyce.
His painting Flowers is a rare still-life by A. R. Thomson, who normally painted portraits, and it was done in less than one hour as a Christmas present for his friend and biographer, Arthur Dimmock. It was acquired by the Deaf Museum & Archive in a private sale in September 2014 from Cassandra Turk, the daughter of the first BDHS President, A. F. Dimmock (1918-2007). Arthur was the biographer of the book Tommy on the life of Alfred Thomson.
Born in Bangalore, India, to Major George Thomson, an officer in the British Indian Army, Alfred Thomson was discovered to be deaf during infancy. When aged seven he was sent to be educated at the Royal Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb Poor at Margate as a fee-paying pupil. He was not academically successful but was found to be able to sketch well. He became an artist in spite of opposition from his father and his teachers at Margate. Although Thomson attended the London New Art School in Kensington for a time, he was largely self-taught as an artist and his first paid work was designing posters for a whisky company. He also created a series of posters for Daimler Cars.
His early years as an artist were a real struggle and he was often in dire poverty. In the 1930s he created a series of murals for the Duncannon Hotel in London
His painting of the Pilgrim Fathers Embarking at Plymouth, commissioned by Essex County Council in 1936, was the turning point in his life. He had submitted his painting to the council and after stringent judging his work was declared a winner. This painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in 1937. Not long after he was elected a Royal Academician, work became plentiful. During World War II he completed a number of commissions for the War Artists’ Advisory Committee and in September 1942 became a full-time salaried artist attached to the Air Ministry until an accidental shooting wounded him. In the 1948 Olympic Games in London Thomson became the last person to win a Gold Medal for his painting of a seated boxer as medals for art were abandoned in subsequent Olympic Games.
In 1958 the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh visited his studio for the Commemoration Dinner of the RAF picture and later he painted the interiors of the House of Commons and the House of Lords for Harold Macmillan, the Prime Minister.
He was married twice and he had two children from his second wife.
He died in October 1979.
This painting of Ribchester Church and Roman Museum was one of the four watercolours donated by Anthony Boyce, our former President, to the Deaf Museum
& Archive in June 2016.
James Brindle was born deaf in Blackburn in August 1892, the son of William and Elizabeth Brindle. There were three siblings in the family, one girl and two boys, and all were educated at the Royal Cross School, Preston, where James’s artistic talent was noted and he was sent to the Harris College in Preston every night until he left school in 1908. He initially worked in a cotton mill before becoming a commercial poster artist and later a landscape and marine painter.
James’s speciality was the painting of landscapes and seascapes, mostly around Preston and the Lake District but as a young man he helped to paint eight long panoramic Egyptian scenes in oil on the balcony of the Harris Art Gallery as well as ten painted portraits of Pharaohs, which are still there, being floodlit at the top floor of the gallery every day. Brindle regularly exhibited at the Harris Museum and Art Gallery throughout his career.
James married Mary Hindley, also a former pupil of the Royal Cross School, after the First World War and became a founder member of the Preston Arts Society in 1924. He travelled all around Preston and to all corners of the British Isles painting countryside scenes. The four paintings exhibited at the Deaf Museum & Archive were painted between 1972 and 1974. He was noted for his help to aspiring artists and regularly gave demonstrations to art classes with the assistance of an interpreter. Brindle continued to paint until a few days before his death in 1977. The Harris Art Gallery staged an exhibition of his artworks as a tribute to the Deaf Ribble Artist.
The painting was originally executed by Maguire as a start towards an all-round design of a fresco for the bare lower walls of St. Saviour’s Church in Oxford Street, London. “He had a great and earnest desire to make the Church more beautiful, and to carry on for it some of the work he had executed at Cabra Institution Chapel” 1 in Dublin, Ireland. The frame was procured much later as a remembrance of the late H. Bass who was a Lay Reader for many years under the Rev. F. W. G. Gilby. When St. Saviour’s Church was pulled down in 1922 to make way for new shops and offices, the painting was transferred to St. Bede’s Church in Clapham, then St. Barnabas Church, Lewisham, and its last resting home was at St. Saviour’s, Acton, West London. The painting came to the Deaf Museum along with other paintings and artefacts upon the closure of St. Saviour’s, Acton, in 2014.
The Passing of Saint Saviour’s, (The First Church for the Deaf and Dumb), Oxford Street, London 1873-1922, Royal Association in Aid of the Deaf and Dumb, [1923].
A 14 inches long gash was found on the painting and it was believed that a hearing group had hired the hall and had placed a row of chairs in front of the painting and some persons rocking their chairs resulted in this deep gash.
The painting was repaired by a professional restorer and is now in excellent condition.
Francis Ross Maguire was born deaf in London in 1855, the son of an engineering surveyor, Thomas H. Maguire. Francis, known as Frank after he married, had a sister, Teresa and a younger brother, Walter, who were also born deaf. They were originally admitted to the London Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb in Old Kent Road but because the family was Roman Catholic, Francis’s mother was concerned about their religious education. After the death of Thomas, there was no Catholic school for deaf children in England so Francis at the age of 13 was admitted to St. Joseph’s School for Deaf Boys at Cabra in August 1868 after being recommended by Viscountess Castlerose. His sister Teresa was admitted to St. Mary’s School for Deaf Girls at Cabra in 1869. The Brothers sing the Irish Sign Language educated Francis and he stayed only for two years.
He returned home to London and attended the Lambeth School of Art to study painting, sketching and stained glass techniques. He started working as a stained glass artist for a religious firm, Burns,Gills and Oates of London, for which he painted many religious pictures, oil paintings and icons for mainly Catholic Churches in the British Isles and abroad including Canterbury Cathedral.
The Last Supper on wall in St Saviour’s
Church, Oxford Street, London
He married Annie O’Brien, a deaf Irish woman, in 1887. He went to Cabra and stayed there from 1912 to 1915 where he did several murals for the school chapel and refectory. Francis did not ask for payment for his work at St. Joseph’s.
After his wife’s death in 1909 Frank increasingly became senile as he grew older and was admitted twice to the Brookwood Mental Hospital near Woking, Surrey, and eventually died there in March 1934 at the age of 79. He is buried in the St Mary’s Roman Catholic Cemetery in London with his wife, his mother and sister Harriet.
Photograph of Francis Ross Maguire with his pet dog.
The painting The Deaf and Dumb Baronet was that of Sir Arthur Henderson Fairbairn, a deaf baronet. The deaf artist Charles Webb Moore did this portrait in 1903 and the Hampshire Association for the Deaf later donated it to the BDHS Museum upon the closure of the Fairbairn Centre in Portsmouth. It was in a poor and fragile condition so the BDHS had the painting professionally restored at a cost of £300 in 2010.
Sir Arthur Henderson Fairbairn, who liked to call himself “The Only Deaf and Dumb Baronet”, lived from 1852 to 1915 and became the third Baronet in 1891 on the death of his father, Sir Thomas Fairbairn, who was the Chairman of the great Manchester Exhibition of 1856 and of the International Exhibition in London in 1862. Arthur and his sister Constance, who was also deaf, were born at Prestwich, Lancashire. He inherited the family wealth, which came from an invention of riveting machines which were in great use in dockyards and in the construction of bridges. His wealth enabled Sir Arthur to become an excellent philanthropist and with his sister Constance he gave unstinting support to Deaf charities throughout Britain, mainly in the South of England. He was a great traveller and had visited almost every country in Europe and also the United States. He was a most accomplished horseman, a capital hand with his rifle, and a most enthusiastic
cyclist.
He contributed financially to many organisations, especially the British Deaf and Dumb Association and the Royal Association for the Deaf and Dumb, giving considerable sums. One example of his generosity can be seen in the 1903 BDDA photograph of its Congress Banquet at the Royal Venetian Restaurant, Holborn, London. He paid the whole cost of the Banquet and also paid for the hire of many of the evening suits worn by the men attending the function. He was a firm believer in the use of sign language as a means of educating deaf children and had no sympathy with the oral system.
Who was Charles Webb Moore?
Charles Webb Moore (1848-1933) was an engraver and artist, described as “the doyen of deaf artists” in an article by A. J. Wilson (who like Moore was deaf and also an engraver) in The Silent
World in 1924. Moore was born on 7th April 1848 in Camden Town, London, the fifth and youngest child of Isaac Webb Moore, artist and lithographer (1808-1886), and Amelia Lyons (1806-1881). His parents and his four siblings were all deaf.
He was a pupil at the London Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb in Old Kent Road, attending from February 1858 to December 1862. Showing a flair for engraving, Moore then trained as a wood engraver and subsequently worked for a number of periodicals including The Graphic and Illustrated London News as well as a number of deaf journals. He later turned to painting, mainly because of advances in the printing industry which rendered the wood engraving process redundant. Although he did numerous landscape and still life paintings, he is better known for his portraits – including the one of Sir Arthur Fairbairn that is now hanging in the Deaf Museum in Warrington.
Moore was closely associated with St. Saviour’s Church in Oxford Street, London, the first church in the U.K. to be built specifically for deaf people, and its social club. He also was a member of its Drama Society, acting in a number of its theatrical productions, and the Deaf and Dumb Debating Society. He and his circle of friends (who included the well-known deaf artist Thomas Davidson) formed the core of the community at St. Saviour’s. Moore was also a part of Frank Brangwyn’s artistic circle.
On 4th August 1878 Charles Webb Moore married a deaf lady, Emily Eliza Kamerick (1856-1947) at St. Mary’s Church, Paddington. The service was conducted by the Rev. Churchill and interpreted by sign language by the Rev. Samuel Smith, M.A., of St. Saviour’s Church. After marriage they settled in Paddington, later moving to Chiswick and then Willesden. They had six children, the eldest being deaf. Their deaf descendants include a great-granddaughter, Jennifer Depledge (née Moore).
Charles Webb Moore died aged 84 on 19th January 1933 and is buried in the Willesden New Cemetery, N.W. London.
Photograph of Charles W. Moore