Helen Allingham R.W.S. 1848-1926

Helen Allingham, nee Paterson, was born at Swadlincote, Derbyshire in 1848.  The following year her father, a doctor, moved his wife and daughter to Altrincham, Cheshire, where he had purchased a new practice. Surrounded by her mother's family, the cultured and liberally minded Herfords, Helen spent a happy childhood as the eldest of seven children.  Her father and her three year old sister died suddenly, however, from an attack of diptheria when she was thirteen and her childhood abruptly came to an end.  Mrs Paterson took her young family away from Cheshire to lodge with her husband's family in Birmingham. 

In later years, Helen did not forget the county where she had spent her childhood and the present watercolour depicts a typical Cheshire cottage.  The level of the first floor is on a line almost with its eaves, a large bay window dominates the central part of the house and the wooden framework has at one time been blackened as was customary at the time in Cheshire and Lancashire.