Charles Kerr was an artist well known for his portrait, genre and landscape paintings and for his illustrations of the H Rider Haggard Novels and for Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes story the Sign of Four.
He went to Rugby with his brother and fellow Pellipar Founder Robert Kerr, before going up to Corpus Christi with an Exhibition. He studied at the Royal Academy Schools in London and the Academie Julian in Paris. He exhibited at the Royal Academy, including ‘Myself’ the self portrait shown above which is in the Tate’s collection as well as at the Royal Society of Oil Painters, the Royal Society of British Artists, the New English Art Club, the Manchester Art Gallery, the Royal Hibernian and the Walker. He was friend with Whistler.
He was initiated into Apollo University Lodge No 357 whilst up at Oxford.
He sadly died young in 1907 after battling a significant addiction to morphine.
Picture Credit: Tate Gallery Ref N02215