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Louis John Rhead (November 6, 1857 – July 29, 1926) was an English-born American artist, illustrator, author andangler who was born inEtruria, Staffordshire, England. He emigrated to the United States at the age of twenty-four.
The Rhead family had operated and worked in theStaffordshire Potteries for at least three generations. Louis' father George W. Rhead worked in the pottery industry and was a highly respectedgilder andceramic artist. In the 1870s, George Rhead taught art and design in Staffordshire schools.[2] He foundedFenton School of Art.
Louis and all his siblings attended their father's art classes and worked in the potteries as children. His brothersFrederick Alfred Rhead and George Woolliscroft Rhead Jr. (1855–1920) were also artistic, and Louis, later in his career, sometimes collaborated with them, for example in book-illustration projects. Louis was also the uncle of the pottersCharlotte Rhead andFrederick Hurten Rhead.
Because Louis demonstrated exceptional talent, when he was thirteen in 1872, his father sent him to study in Paris, France with artistGustave Boulanger. After three years in Paris, Louis Rhead returned to work in the potteries as a ceramic artist atMinton and later atWedgwood. In 1879 he gained a scholarship at theNational Art Training School,South Kensington,London.[2] After graduating from South Kensington in 1881, Louis Rhead worked briefly for Wedgwood and worked for the London publisherCassell.
In 1883 at the age of twenty-four, Louis Rhead was offered a position asArt Director for the U.S. publishing firm ofD. Appleton in New York City. He accepted and emigrated to the U.S. in the fall of 1883. In 1884 he married Catherine Bogart Yates, thus becoming an American citizen. Louis and Catherine lived inFlatbush, Brooklyn overlookingProspect Park for forty years.[2]
Rhead was an avid fly fisher and by his own account started fishing for trout in the U.S. sometime between 1888 and 1890. In 1901 he became interested in angling art and much of his later published works deal with fishing andfly fishing. Rhead was also a tackle dealer and sold his own line ofartificial flies.[2] His most famous and celebrated work isAmerican Trout-Stream Insects (1916). At the time of its publication this was one of the first and most comprehensive studies of stream entomology ever published in America.
Paul Schullery inAmerican Fly Fishing—A History (1987) says this about Rhead:
Louis Rhead was one of the most creative, fresh-thinking, and stimulating of American fly-fishing writers, a man of extraordinary gifts. ... his major effort wasAmerican Trout Stream Insects, a book based on several years of trout fishing in the Catskills.[4]
Louis Rhead's death was somewhat unusual. He died from a heart attack at his retirement home inAmityville, Long Island. A portion of his obituary inThe New York Times, Friday July 30, 1926:
LOUIS RHEAD, ARTIST AND ANGLER, DEAD. Exhausted Recently by Long Struggle In Capturing a 30-pound Turtle.
... About two weeks ago Mr. Rhead set out to catch a turtle weighing thirty pounds which had been devastating trout ponds on his place, Seven Oaks. After the turtle was hooked, it put up a fight for more than half an hour. Although Mr. Rhead was successful in the end, he became exhausted. A short time later he suffered from his first attack of heart disease. Yesterday's was his second.[5]
Bernard Bumpus (1921–2004) was the leading authority on the Rhead family. In the 1980s Bumpus curated an exhibitionRhead Artists and Potters at theGeffrye Museum in London, which mainly featured works of art by the Rhead family, but also included examples of Louis Rhead's flies. It toured several UK Museums including thePotteries Museum & Art Gallery in Staffordshire. Bumpus hoped to take a version of the exhibition to the US, but, despite American interest in the Rhead family, this project foundered.[6]
David and Goliath fromThe Psalms of David[7]Robin Hood and Marion in theirbower[8]"Softly Creeping and Lightly Dropping" fromSpeckled Brook Trout[9]
Tennyson, Alfred (1898).Idylls of the King: Vivien, Elaine, Enid, Guinevere. With sixty original decorations by George Wooliscroft Rhead & Louis Rhead. New York: R. H. Russell.
Hillis, Nevel Dwight, ed. (1900).The Psalms of David. Illustrated and Decorated by Louis Rhead. Chicago: Fleming H. Revel Company.
Bunyan, John; Haweis, H. R. Rev (1912).Pilgrim's Progress-from this world to that which is to come. Embellished with over one hundred and twenty designs done by three brothers: George Woolliscroft Rhead, Frederick Rhead, Louis Rhead. New York: The Century Co.
Crandall, Lathan A. (1914).Days in the Open. Decorations by Louis Rhead. New York: Fleming H. Revel Company.
Stevenson, Robert Louis (1915).Treasure Island. Decorated and Illustrated by Louis Rhead. New York: Harper Brothers.
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