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Hoggatt Set

The issue date for this collection is Feb 20th 2012.You can now pre order the collection here. Please see the terms and conditions for pre ordering here. The collection will be available to order on our eBay Store from Monday 13th February 2012. Please also note that items will be dispatched from the issue date onwards. The Isle of Man Post Office is pleased to present a set of five stamps which feature the artwork of William Hoggatt (1879 – 1961). Alan Kelly of Mannin Collections writes: William Hoggatt was born 1st September 1879 at 10 Garnett Street, Lancaster, son of James Hoggatt, a joiner, and Margaret Ann Hoggatt née Stalker. Hoggatt was educated in Lancaster, where his artistic talent won him a scholarship to the Royal College of Art, London, which he declined on the grounds that ‘he wanted to work freely’. He then worked as an apprentice for a local firm of stained-glass manufacturers, but also continued his art studies at the Storey Institute, Lancaster. Whilst there Herbert L. Storey, the son of the founder of the Institute, noticed the quality of Hoggatt’s work and paid for him to study art at the L’Academie Julian, Paris, from 1901-1903, under Jean Paul Laurens.

Hoggatt First Day Cover

On his return to England, Hoggatt rented a cottage at Caton, near Lancaster, and started to paint full-time. In 1906 he worked for a period of time at the Tate Gallery, London, and whilst there met a young man called Leonard Archer who invited Hoggatt to stay at his home at Chalfont St. Giles. It was there he met Leonard’s sister, Dazine, and by the time Hoggatt left she had agreed to marry him. Both their parents were opposed to the intended marriage so the couple decided to elope to the Isle of Man – a place Hoggatt had heard much about in Lancaster. Early in 1907 he arrived in the Island and moved into ‘Glendown’, Port St. Mary. He then sent for Dazine and shortly after her arrival they were married on 20th April, 1907 at Kirk Christ, Rushen.

Hoggatt Stamp Sheet

Working in oils, watercolours and pastels Hoggatt spent the next fifty-four years painting scenes throughout the Island. He exhibited from 1904 at the Royal Academy, Royal Institute, Royal Cambrian Academy, Glasgow Institute and at many other art institutions, including overseas. In 1925 he was elected a full member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours and was later a member of the Liverpool Academy and the Royal British Colonial Society of Artists. His first one-man exhibition was held at the Hampstead Art Gallery, London in 1920 entitled Tone Harmonies and contained sixty of his paintings of the Island. Most of the pictures were sold at the exhibition, including six which were purchased by a collector from South Africa. After this exhibition Hoggatt started to receive the recognition he deserved and his work was reproduced in all the leading art journals, including The Studio and The Connoisseur. The Studio magazine said of him – ‘William Hoggatt has chosen the artistic solitude of an Island full of natural beauty. His work shows a constant passionate striving for the wonders of light, colour, texture and the whole overpowering poetry of landscape’.