Charles Holme (/hoʊm/; 1848–1923) was an English journalist and art critic, founding editor of The Studio from 1893. He published a series of books promoting peasant art in the first decades of the 20th century.[1]
Holme was born on 7 October 1848 in Derby, the younger son of a silk manufacturer, George Holme, and his wife Ann, née Brentnall.[2][3] Holme himself worked in the silk and wool trades, trading with Turkestan, India and China in the 1870s. He subsequently opened offices in Japan,[4] visiting the country in 1889 with the painter Alfred East and Arthur Lasenby Liberty and his wife.[5] He served as vice-president of the Japan Society, and was a recipient of the Order of the Rising Sun in 1902.[6] Holme was a member of the private bibliophile club, the Sette of Odd Volumes,[7] and President in 1890.[8] Holme was painted by Philip Alexius de László in 1908; the portrait was published in The Studio in 1911.[2]
Following his retirement from trade in 1892, Holme founded The Studio: an illustrated magazine of fine and applied art, a magazine dedicated to fine arts and decorative arts, giving roughly equal weight to each. The first issue appeared in April 1893. The first serving editor was Joseph Gleeson White (Lewis Hind had acted as editor for four months before the launch of the magazine). In 1895 Holme took over as editor himself, although Gleeson White continued to contribute. Holme retired as editor in 1919 for reasons of health, and was succeeded by his son Charles Geoffrey Holme, who was already the editor of special numbers and year-books of the magazine.[2]
Edited works
[edit]Modern etchings, mezzotints and dry-points, 1913
Special numbers of The Studio were edited by Holme for separate publication as books.
^ abcJulie F. Codell (2004). Holme, Charles (1848–1923). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press; online edition, May 2008. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/33950. Accessed June 2013. (subscription required)
^ ab'Mr Charles Holme', The Times, 19 March 1923, p.17
The Diary of Charles Holme's 1889 Visit to Japan and North America, edited by Toni Huberman, Sonia Ashmore and Yasuko Suga. Kent: Global Oriental, 2008
Media related to Charles Holme at Wikimedia Commons
