12 Facts About Frank Holl

Francis Montague Holl was a British painter, specialising in somewhat sentimental paintings with a moment from a narrative situation, often drawing on the trends of social realism and the problem picture in Victorian painting.

Frank Holl was, especially in his later years when the demand for social realism slackened, a portrait painter, mostly of official-type portraits of distinguished and therefore elderly men, including members of the royal family.

Frank Holl died in his early 40s, which some contemporaries attributed to overwork, as he had been very busy in the last twenty years of his life.

Frank Holl's reputation fell considerably after his death, and the exhibition at the Watts Gallery in 2013 and its catalogue were the first such attention he had received for a century.

Frank Holl gained the travelling studentship in 1868; the successful work was characteristic of the young painter's mood, being The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away.

Admirers of Frank Holl included Vincent van Gogh, who in letters to his brother Theo and friend Anthon van Rappard expressed his admiration for Frank Holl.

Whilst living in London van Gogh fastidiously cut out and collected Frank Holl's prints published in The Graphic.

Frank Holl is buried in a vault on the western side of Highgate Cemetery and was joined by his wife Annie Laura on 10 June 1931, who died aged 86 at their home, Three Gables, Fitzjohn's Avenue, Hampstead.

Frank Holl: Emerging from the Shadows was a 2013 exhibition at the Watts Gallery in Surrey, England which included 14 paintings by the artist.

Many of Frank Holl's paintings have been lost, however; their importance as pieces of social realism ensures that the ones around will retain their value.

Frank Holl was overwhelmed with commissions, which he would not decline.

Frank Holl used his daughter Nina as a model, and the sword of Field Marshall, Lord Wolseley, whose portrait he was painting at the time.