Harold Hume Piffard (10 August 1867 – 17 January 1939[note 1]) was a British artist, illustrator, and one of the first British aviators.[1][2][3]

Harold H. Piffard
The Thin Red Line by Harold H. Piffard
Born	(1867-08-10)10 August 1867 33 Blandford Square, Marylebone, London
Died	17 January 1939(1939-01-17) (aged 71)
Resting place	Old Chiswick Cemetery
Nationality	British
Known for	Artist, aviator and illustrator
Movement	Orientalism
Spouse(s)	Helena Katherine Docetti Walker ​ ​ (m. 1895; died 1900)​ Eleanor Margaret Hoile ​ ​ (m. 1902)​

Personal life

Harold Hume Piffard was born in Marylebone, the sixth son of Charles Piffard (4 July 1829 – 2 July 1884)[4] and his wife Emily, née Hume (1837 – 1911), the daughter of James Hume, a barrister and Magistrate at Calcutta. They had married in Calcutta on 1 June 1858.[5] Charles had received his BA at Clare College, Cambridge in 1848,[4] was called to the Bar on 17 November 1854,[6] and was awarded an MA from Clare College on 30 June 1856.[6] Charles was Clerk of the Crown in the High Court of Calcutta. Piffard's four eldest brothers had all been born in India.[7] He was educated at Lancing College, being sent there together with his older brother Lawrence in 1877.[7] He was still there at the time of the 1881 census. A year earlier he had run away from school to find employment on the stage, sleeping on the Embankment for several nights while he visited theatres and music halls.[7] In February 1884, he travelled to India, where he travelled and worked on a tea plantation. In 1889, he returned to London and began to study art at the Royal Academy Schools, exhibiting his first painting at the Royal Academy in 1895 and living in St Pancras. On 4 June 1895 he married Helena Katherine Docetti Walker (1 August 1871 – 27 November 1900)[8]—at St John's Free Church in Dundee.[9][10] By 1899, he had moved to 18 Addison Road,[note 2] Bedford Park, Chiswick, London, where he remained until he died.

Piffard and Helena had four children: Harold (28 May 1896 – 7 June 1917); [11][12][13][14] Dorothy (19 March 1898 – 7 May 1969), an artist-painter, who continued to live at her parents' old address at 18 Addison Road; Ivan (5 November 1899 – 27 February 1993); [15] and Grahame (November 1900 – 12 February 1901). Helena died soon after the birth of her fourth child in 1900. Harold married again on 8 January 1902, at the St. Giles Cathedral (Church of Scotland) in Edinburgh. His bride was Eleanor Margaret Hoile (17 April 1871 – 20 December 1953).[16][17] Piffard and Eleanor had one son, Hume (28 July 1905 – 12 September 1976).[18] Piffard died on 17 January 1939;[19][20][21] he is buried in Old Chiswick Cemetery,[note 1] as is his first wife Helena.[22] His second wife Eleanor survived him for nearly 20 years.

Aviator

First flights in Ealing

Piffard began making model aircraft in 1907, winning a prize for one of them at Olympia in 1909. He began to fly in 1909, using an 8-cylinder 40 horsepower ENV 'D' engine and building the airframe in his studio; he rented a shed on Back Common Road, Turnham Green near his home to assemble the aircraft, which was a biplane with elevator in front of the wing, and a variable-pitch propeller.[2] From September 1909 he tested the aircraft on a rented field in Ealing to the west of Masons Lane at what was then Hangar Hill Farm (not the same as the later Acton Aerodrome, which was on the other side of Masons Lane).[2][23] He managed to get the plane airborne and fly "a foot or two from the ground for a distance of a hundred yards or so."[2] However, on 3 December 1909 the aircraft and its marquee hangar were destroyed in a storm.[2]

Flying at Shoreham

Piffard then co-founded (with George Wingfield, a lawyer) the Aviator's Finance Company, which took out a lease on land at Shoreham-by-Sea near his old school, Lancing College, which already possessed a hangar. With Edouard Baumann and two assistants, they reworked the aircraft's design and had Hummingbird ready on 3 May 1910. It was able to take off in short hops, earning it the nickname of "The Grasshopper"; it frequently crashed because of the hidden ditches in the grass. In September 1910 he flew at a height of 30 or 40 feet for half a mile, managing to fly right across the field to a nearby hotel, The Sussex Pad "in about 40 seconds". He had not learnt how to turn the plane in the air, and the plane had to be wheeled back to the hangar, as there was no space to take off near the hotel, but he celebrated with champagne all the same.[2][24][25]

A local cinematograph company asked to film a flight, and he confidently accepted; Colin Manton describes this as characteristic hubris.[2] Ignoring warnings of a dangerous ditch, he tried to fly over it, destroying the aircraft in a "comprehensive smash" which was recorded on film.[2] The cameraman noted that Piffard still "seemed in no way disappointed; in fact, I thought I saw a gleam of satisfaction in his eye".[2]

In 1911 Piffard unsuccessfully tested a new aircraft, the Piffard Hydroplane, which had floats as well as wheels, on Shoreham beach. He developed no more aircraft and did not attempt to fly again, working as an artist and illustrator. The land at Shoreham became Shoreham Airport.[2]

Artist

Painter

Piffard painted a wide variety of subjects in both oils and watercolour, including history paintings.[26]

• 
  Classical scene
• 
  Joan of Arc
• 
  Snowballing
• 
  Bather
• 
  Odalisque
• 
  Still life
• 
  The French assault on Saragossa on 10 February 1809
• 
  Courtship history painting
• 
  Napoleon history painting
• 
  Jacobean bathtime scene
• 
  The Signing of the Armistice, Nov. 11th, 1918[27]

Illustrator

Piffard started his work as an illustrator with contributions to periodicals including The Strand Magazine, The Illustrated London News and The Penny Pictorial Magazine.[26] He began to illustrate books in 1895, eventually illustrating over a hundred novels by authors including Frances Hodgson Burnett,[28] Guy Boothby, Harry Collingwood, Mrs. Henry Wood, Richard Marsh, Max Pemberton, and J. M. Neale, as well as a series of classics for Collins including works by Thackeray, Dickens, and George Eliot.[26]

• 
  Cover of George Griffith's Valdar the Oft-born, 1895, signed lower left
• 
  Cover of William le Queux's Zoraida, 1895, signed lower left
• 
  Interior of a Bromsgrove Nailmaker's shed, 1896
• 
  "The Silent Groves", plate on page 279 of Sibyl Falcon. A study in romantic morals by Alfred Edgar Jepson, 1895
• 
  "There in the blackness of the night I saw two gleaming eyes", plate on page 77 of The City of Gold by Edward Markwick, 1896

Example of a full set of illustrations

The following set of six illustrations were made by Piffard for Geoffrey Harrington's Adventures by Harry Collingwood. This was published by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge in 1907.

• 
  Geoffrey Harrington holds onto the stump of the mast while attempting to cut free the broken mast and rigging
• 
  Geoffrey Harrington foils an assassination attempt
• 
  Geoffrey Harrington and the Queen plight their troth to each other
• 
  The Avelians set the Tutan Dockyard on fire
• 
  Geoffrey Harrington is succoured by his Royal Sweetheart
• 
  The deposed Tutan King listens to music

Legacy

In 2007 the Shoreham Airport Historical Association built a replica of Piffard's Hummingbird.[29]

Notes

References

External links

Artworks

• At Artnet (79 artworks)
• At MutualArt (29 artworks)
• Art Renewal Center (4 artworks)
• Art UK (2 artworks)

Books illustrated

• Works by Harold H. Piffard at Project Gutenberg
• Online Books listed at University of Pennsylvania library (22 books)
• Online Books list at Internet Speculative Fiction Database (15 books)
• Books illustrated by Harold Piffard at the Hathi Trust
• Books illustrated by Piffard in the Jisc Library Hub Discover database (which draws together 160 UK and Irish academic, national & specialist library catalogues.
• Books by Piffard at the Internet Archive
• Books by Piffard listed in the catalogue of the British Library, including two online texts.
• The Bear Alley blow on Piffard by Robert J. Kirkpatrick, includes a list of 174 books illustrated by Piffard.