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Presentation: Framed
Signed
Oil on canvas
30 x 54 in. (74.7 x 134.7 cm.)

In its original black and silver Italian bolection moulding frame.

Provenance:commission by Sir Benjamin Johnson for his house Abbot's Lea, Woolton, 1927. Completed to 1928; given to Halliday as a gift in 1937 upon the death of Johnson.

Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1939, under the title Evening in the Campangna, (with new date added 1930-9 but no changes to the composition).

Literature: Edward Halliday, Art for Life, 1925-1939, Anne Compton, pp 18-21, reproduced p. 20 and on front cover.

Halliday was the Rome Scholar in Painting for 1925, and Hypnos is arguably his masterpiece from his 3 years he spent at the School.
When Halliday arrived in Rome, Winifred Knights, with whom he became a great friend, was hard at work on SantissimaTrinita. It is perhaps more than merely tempting to see the influences of Knights in Halliday’s work, not only with handling of the paint and the theme of sleep, but also compositional devices such as the umbrella in the foreground which, it is recorded, Halliday added late on in the paintings evolution.

Thumbnail panels:

Edward Irvine Halliday 1902-1984

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 was also an artist. He lived in London.