Background
She was the daughter of Thomas Wilde Powell, a wealthy patron of the Arts and Crafts Movement.
She was the daughter of Thomas Wilde Powell, a wealthy patron of the Arts and Crafts Movement.
She is noted for her part in establishing the National Art Collections Fund in 1903 to help preserve Britain"s artistic heritage. She was committed to women"s suffrage from 1889 onwards. A talented artist and copyist of Old Masters, she dedicated herself to the revival of tempera painting, translating Cennino Cennini"s 15th century treatise Il libro dell" arte o trattato della pittura in 1899 and founding the Society of Painters in Tempera in 1901.
Ernest Havell and Rothenstein formed the India Society and Herringham joined the committee.
She was the only female committee member at the time. The Society would often meet at her home at 40 Wimpole Street in London, which was later destroyed during The Blitz.
Her husband became Chair of the India Society committee in 1914. Following the formation of the Society, Herringham returned to the Ajanta caves with Rothenstein.
She set up a camp with the help of the Nizam of Hyderabad, and with several artists set about copying the frescoes.
lieutenant should also be noted that Herringham was a committed suffragette. In 1914, she returned to the United Kingdom but was beset by ill health until her death in Sussex in 1929. Among the visitors who observed her work was William Rothenstein.
An exhibition of the copies opened at the Crystal Palace in London in June 1911.
Herringham, however, had begun to suffer from delusions of pursuit and persecution and was admitted to an asylum. She spent the rest of her life in mental institutions.
Her biographer Mary Lago suggests Christiana Herringham may have been the inspiration for Mrs Moore in East.M. Forster"s novel A Passage to India.