Biographies

Maurice William Greiffenhagen (1862 – 1931) Maurice Greiffenhagen was a London-born painter, who in the 1890s and 1900s also did a lot of illustrative work, including striking action scenes drawn with a vigorous line. His illustrations include pictures for a series of novels by Rider Haggard, and he also contributed to various magazines of around the turn of the century, such as . His paintings are very different, in some cases being of the idyllic school, sometimes symbolist, and sometimes in a flat, decorative style that lent itself well to decorative schemes. He also worked as an illustrator, doing, for example, the illustrations for H. Rider Haggard’s popular novels, and . The Windsor Magazine She Ayesha: The Return of She He studied at the RA Schools, and became ARA in 1916 and RA in 1922. His reputation was established when the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, bought his picture , and the Chantrey Bequest later bought two of his pictures for the nation: and . The Idyll Women by a Lake Dawn In the 1900s, Greiffenhagen turned increasingly to portraiture, and in 1906 he was given charge of the Life Department at the Glasgow School of Art, a position he retained for 23 years despite complaining of the difficulty of travelling so far and so often from London. Between 1901 and 1912 he exhibited at many of the big international exhibitions. Though married, Greiffenhagen had an affair with Catherine Carswell in 1908. He is represented as Louis Pender in her first novel, , published in 1920. Open the Door!