HAPPY ENGLAND As Painted by Helen Allingham With a Memoir and Descriptions by Marcus B. Huish

London: Adam and Charles Black, 1909. First Edition of the reissued larger size printing. With 80 beautifully produced colour plates from Helen Allingham paintings, each with a captioned tissue guard and a portrait of the artist from a black and white photo with facsimile signature. 8vo, bound in the original maroon cloth, the upper cover and spine gilt lettered and decorated in a lovely English rose motif in green and pink. xi, 204 pp, 8 ads, pp. A very attractive copy, with a bit of mellowing to the spine panel, but the gilt very bright and fine, internally fine and fresh. FIRST EDITION IN THE LARGER SIZE, OF THIS CHARMING WORK. The artist, who previously worked under the name Helen Mary Elizabeth Paterson,began painting in watercolours the beautiful English countryside after retiring from a career illustrating periodicals. She particularly loved painting the picturesque farmhouses and cottages of Surrey and Sussex for which she became famous. She specialized also in the rural scenes of other parts of the country – Middlesex, Kent, the Isle of Wight and the West Country – and abroad in Venice, Italy. It is notable that other then a handful of paintings of Venice, she never painted outside of England. Her paintings of many years were collected in this volume, appropriately named HAPPY ENGLAND.
While Vincent Van Gogh was developing as an artist and studying English illustrated journals he was struck very positively by her artistic work published in 'The Graphic'.