Biographies

Rustom Vicaji (c.1857 – c.1934) Born about 1857 in India as Rustomjee Viccajee, Vicaji descended, on his father’s side, from a distinguished Parsi merchant family closely associated with the Nizam of Hyderabad; his grandfather, Merjee Viccajee, co-funded the construction of the Fire Temple, a Zoroastrian place of worship, in Hyderabad in 1847. Vicaji’s mother, however, was an English woman named Clara Galloway. By 1881, Vicaji and his siblings were living in Chelsea (London), where he was employed as a clerk. In June 1889, he married Jessie Julia Watts in Fulham (London). Vicaji and his wife later resided at 17 Holly Mount, Hampstead (London), where they lived with their daughter, Dorothy Elaine Vicaji (1890-1945), a portrait painter. In his April 1918 review of the exhibition of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours , Ezra Pound describes Vicaji as a minor . (NA 22.24:471) Charles Conder The MJP would like to thank Mitchell Owens for the detailed information about Vicaji’s life and origins.