Private
Edward Halliday
(1902 - 1984)
Self-portrait in the Studio, c. 1920
Private Collection
Edward Halliday (1902 - 1984)
Size:
Height – 31.7cm
Width – 43.2cm
Literature: Llewellyn, Sacha, and Paul Liss. Portrait of an Artist. Liss Llewellyn, 2021, p.146.
Halliday depicts his daughter (the painter Charlotte Halliday, b. 1935) and son watching television two decades before television networks switched to colour in the mid-1960s.
The first real television children’s programmes started in 1946 after the end of WWII when there was a live Sunday afternoon transmission known as Children’s Hour. This rivalled, and gradually replaced, the radio version of Children’s Hour which had first appeared in 1922.
Halliday, himself, had two arts series radio programs, Artists at Work (1932) and Design in Modern Life (1934). In the 1950s, he was also the voice behind the BBC Television Newsreel.
Painter in oil and watercolour mainly of portraits. Born in Liverpool, Halliday studied at the City School of Art there, in Paris at the Atelier Colarossi and at the Royal College of Art. He was awarded the Prix de Rome and worked at the British School there. Exhibited at RA, RBA, Paris Salon and RP, of which for a time he was president. His work is in the collections of HM The Queen, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, the Athenaeum Club, Wolverhampton Royal Hospital and Bootle Dyeworks. His work was reproduced in The Studio, Illustrated London News and The Times and he was interviewed by Stanley Casson for his book Artists at Work, published in 1933. In 1997, the University of Liverpool held an exhibition which concentrated on Halliday’s efforts to popularise art between the wars. Halliday’s daughter Charlotte is also an artist. He lived in London.
