The sisters Clara, Ellen, Hilda and Henrietta Montalba were the four daughters of a Swedish-born father, the artist Anthony Rubens Montalba (original name, Ruben Salomon Abrahamson), and a British mother, Emeline Davies. They were all artistic. While living together in the parental home at 19 Arundel Gardens London during the 1870s they started exhibiting at the Royal Academy. Anthony Montalba later moved his family, which included one son, Edward Augustus, born in 1843 between Ellen and Hilda, a short distance away to 20 Stanley Crescent.
Clara Montalba's A Little Bit of Venice — Salute, 1908. Image credit: Russell-Cotes Art Gallery & Museum, Bournemouth. [Click on this and the following images for more information and larger versions.]
The eldest daughter Clara, born in 1840, studied under Eugene Isabey at the Accademia delle Belle Arti in Venice. She specialised in watercolour and exhibited at the Royal Academy summer exhibitions as well as the Grosvenor Gallery, the Royal Watercolour Society and the 1893 Expo in Chicago. As for RWS, she "was awarded full membership in 1892 and was only the second woman, after Helen Allingham, to achieve this. Art critics often praised the consistent quality of her work, as well as its "spirit and rich, harmonious colouring" (Guide, p. 165). She was a friend of Princess Louise and spent time with her in Canada when Louise was married to the Governor, the Marquis of Lorne. Clara also supported Millicent Fawcett in the fight for women's rights and helped Kate Greenaway and Helen Allingham with their watercolour technique. While living in Venice during the 1890s she had a studio space at 11 Campden House Mews which she shared with her sisters.
Even though official records still show the family at the address in Stanley Crescent, the Montalbas were largely based abroad now. Their home was the Palazzo Trevisan at Campo Sant Agnese, 809 San Vio, fondamenta Zattere, Dorsoduro District. Here the young women continued to paint, to considerable acclaim. Clara would live the longest, dying there aged 90 in 1929. Like the rest of the family, she was buried in the Protestant section of the Cimitero di San Michele, Città Metropolitana di Venezia, Veneto.
The second daughter Ellen, born in 1842, studied at the Royal College of Art and later specialised in portraits, genre scenes and landscapes. She too was admired. The art critic Ellen Clayton found that her portraits were "painted with remarkable knowledge and power," and commented on her "intense love of beauty and splendid colouring," adding, that she was "never more happy than when at Venice, surrounded by almost ideal brilliance and poetic light" (258).
Ellen Montalba's Elegant ladies in an interior casting flowers from an open window, 1908. Reproduced by kind permission of Halls Fine Art Auctioneers, Shrewsbury
When Ellen's oil-painting A Venetian Girl was shown at the Centennial International Exhibition at Melbourne, she was described in the catalogue as "one of the most favourite exhibitors at the Royal Academy" (90). She died not long after her elder sister, in 1930, at the age of 88.
The Onion Boy by Hilda Montalba,
by kind permission of the National Trust, Tatton Park.
The third daughter, Hilda, born 1845, painted genre and landscape subjects, including many scenes in Venice, particularly fisherman and their boats. Her Onion Boy is an example of her skilful drawing and characterisation. She studied at South Kensington and exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery. She died of pnuemonia before her elder sisters, in 1919, aged 73. Her grave is in the same section of the San Michele cemetery as theirs.
The fourth daughter, Henrietta, born 1848, was the most successful, but, sadly the shortest lived of the siblings. She was a sculptor who studied at South Kensington like her sister, and the Accademia di Belle Arti in Naples. She was also a pupil of Jules Dalou while he was in London. Henrietta had her first exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1876. Her fondness lay in portrait sculptures like that of the Amsterdam masseur, Dr Johann Mezger, whose "potent, almost femininely delicate hands" she managed to capture (Hepworth-Dixon 216).
Henrietta Montalba's bust of Robert Browning.
Most of her works, including the one of Browning, were executed in terracotta, but she also worked in marble, and among her bronze works is the striking Venetian Boy Catching a Crab. Edmund Gosse writes: "Her busts have still something of the Dalou touch, the reproduction of which, when not completely successful, is apt to be a little timorous and petty. She is, however, often entirely successful, not least in her children's heads, where she is unsurpassed in the delicacy with which she renders the tremulous forms and tender lines of the mouth and chin" (50).
Henrietta often went to Sweden to visit her Swedish relatives, and among her notable Swedish works is a portrait of the Swedish artist and architect, Fredrik Scholander, for the Artists' Club in Stockholm. Like her sister Clara, Henrietta was a good friend of Princess Louise, who painted her portrait in 1882. Sadly, she died a good deal younger than her sisters, in 1893, while still in her mid-forties. She was the first of the siblings to be interred in San Michele cemetery, where in 1884 her father had been the earliest member of the family to be buried.
Links to Related Material
Bibliography
"Anthony Rubens Montalba." Find a Grave. This site provides good documentation, showing birth certificates, death records etc. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/210860757/anthony_rubens_montalba
Clayton, Ellen Creathorne. English Female Artists, Vol. II. London: Tinsley Brothers, 1876. Internet Archive, from a book in the collection of Harvard University. Web. 4 August 2024.
Denney, Colleen. At the Temple of Art: The Grosvenor Gallery, 1877-1890. London: Associated University Presses, 2000.
Gosse, Edmund. "Living English Sculptors II." The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine Vol. 31 (November 1885): 39-50.
Guide to the Now You See Us exhibition at the Tate, 2024. [Exhibition and Catalogue Review]
Hepworth-Dixon, M. "Henrietta Montalba: A Reminiscence." The Art-Journal (new series 1894): 215-217. HathiTrust, from a copy in the Getty Research Institute. Web. 4 August 2024. [Full text in the Victorian Web.]
Lake, Joshua, editor and compiler. Official Guide to the Picture Galleries, and Catalogue of Fine Arts (Centennial Exhibition, Melbourne). Melbourne: Hutchinson, 1889. Google Books. Free E-book.
"Mere Gossip." The Album: A Journal of Photographs of Men, Women, and Events of the Day. Volume 2 (January 1895): 162-67. Google Books. Free E-book.
Nunn, Pamela Gerrish. "Montalba, Henrietta Skerrett (1856–1893), sculptor." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.. Web. 1 August 2024.
Created 1 August 2024