Biographies

Harriet Halhed (1850 – 1933) Harriet Halded was born in Australia—Tower Hill, Victoria—on July 20, 1850. According to John Edwards, she was the third of four children born to William Duodecimus Halhed and Mary McVittie. The Halheds were one of those wealthy English families of the British empire, and two of the Halhed men, William and Francis, emigrated to Australia in 1837, in order to farm. When Harriet’s parents both died in 1856 (at Tower Hill), leaving four children aged between eight years and a few months, their uncle Francis took them back to Kent, in England, and raised them beside his own family. Halhed trained, as an artist, in both London and France, and studied art in England under Deschamps. Edwards notes that she Halhed became a painter of portraits, figures and domestic scenes. Her work was praised in , as having been better than her current picture in the Royal Academy show, titled became a great friend of the Ashbees in Chelsea, where she had a studio for some time. The New Age (NA 7.3:67) The Little Girl at the Door. Harriet Halhed (Edwards). neither married nor returned to Oz, and she died in Hampstead, London, on February 5, 1933 References Edwards, John. Personal communication to the MJP: November 19, 2009.