Haite Georges Charles 1855-1924

George Charles Haité (8 June 1855 - 31 March 1924) was an English designer, painter, illustrator and writer. His most famous work is the iconic cover design of the Strand Magazine, launched in 1891, which helped popularise the Sherlock Holmes stories of Arthur Conan Doyle. Haité was also a founder member and the first president of the London Sketch Club.
After moving to London in the early 1870s he began making a name for himself as a wallpaper and carpet designer, later working in metal, tapestry and stained glass.
In 1883 he exhibited the first of many paintings at the Royal Academy. Haité worked in oils, watercolours, and pencil, specialising in landscapes with many executed on his travels to Venice, Morocco and Northern Europe. In 1897 his street scene of Dortmund won the Gold landscape prize at that year's Crystal Palace exhibition. He would usually sign his work "Geo C. Haité" or "G.C. Haité".
Membership of numerous art societies including the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours, the Royal Society of British Artists, the Royal Institute of Oil Painters, the Society of Miniature Painters, the Royal British Colonial Society of Artists, the National Association of House Painters and Decorators of England and Wales and, as president, the Institute of Decorative Designers.
Haité also wrote and lectured on art and design and in 1897 was elected president of the Nicolson Institute art gallery in Staffordshire. His inexhaustible social activities even stretched beyond the visual arts, also involved in the famous literary club the Sette of Odd Volumes, one of the earliest members of the Japan Society of London and, from 1888, a Fellow of the Linnean Society.
In late 1890 he was asked by editor George Newnes to provide the cover pen and ink illustration for his new magazine The Strand, launched in January 1891. As sales of the magazine took off with the first of its Sherlock Holmes stories, beginning with A Scandal in Bohemia in the July 1891 issue, Haité's graphic rendering of London's Strand looking eastwards with the magazine title suspended from telegraph wires was destined to become an icon of late-Victorian publishing.
In the spring of 1898, Haité was instrumental in the formation of the London Sketch Club, a breakaway faction of the prestigious Langham Sketching Club where he had acted as president from 1883 until 1887. The catalyst for this split in ranks was a seemingly petty argument over hot or cold suppers. Those with a preference for hot suppers including Tom Browne, John Hassall, Dudley Hardy and Phil May left the Langham to create their own rebel drawing society. Haité was asked to join them as inaugural president and the London Sketch Club was formed, holding its first dinner on April Fool's Day.
After four years as president Haité was persuaded to step down in 1902, after which the club would elect a new president every year. Despite his previous desertion, Haité was still welcomed at the Langham Sketching Club and would be re-elected its president one last time in 1908.
A selection of work by both Haité and his namesake father can be viewed in the prints and drawings collection of the Victoria and Albert museum, Kensington, London.