Louis Huth (22 March 1821 – 12 February 1905), was a British company director and merchant banker. He was a partner in Frederick Huth & Co, the merchant bank established by his father. Huth and his wife, Helen Huth (1837-1924), were significant patrons of the arts, not only possessing a large number of paintings by some of the greatest British artists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but also commissioning works from contemporary artists. Their collection included paintings by artists of the Aesthetic and Symbolist movements, such as James McNeill Whistler RA (1834–1903) and G. F. Watts OM RA (1817 –1904), by both of whom Helen Huth was portrayed in important paintings. Huth, whose collecting extended to antique porcelain, was also a leading influence on the activities of one of the greatest art collectors and connoisseurs of the late Victorian era and the Edwardian years, George Salting (1835-1909), who ultimately left his outstanding collection of art to the British nation.
Early life and business career
Louis Huth was born at Finsbury in London, the son of Frederick Huth (1774–1864), a merchant and merchant banker born in Germany, who 'came of very humble origins, the son of a soldier [without rank], with only his intelligence and appetite for hard work to single him out from other poor boys at the bottom of the social heap in the small village of Harsefeld in the Electorate of Hanover.'Valerie Chidson, Louis Huth 1821–1905: Squire of Possingworth, Waldron Community Players, 2007 (hereafter Chidson), p. 5. After an apprenticeship to a Spanish merchant in Hamburg, Huth eventually established a business in Corunna, Spain, where he met his wife, an orphan believed to be the daughter of a prominent member of the Spanish Royal court. In 1809, following the invasion of Spain by France, Frederick and his wife and children emigrated to England from Spain and established the family merchant house in London, Frederick Huth & Co. By 1829 Huth had become the banker and financial adviser to the Spanish Queen, Maria Christiana, later Queen Regent, and in due course became financial agent for the Spanish government, for which Huth was rewarded with a knighthood by the Spanish crown. Gradually Huth and Co expanded its business in Europe, particularly Germany, and extended its operations to the Americas, becoming a major accepting house concerned with financing international trade and marketing securities; and by the end of the 1840s the Huths ranked 'immediately below such companies as Barings and Rothschilds.'C. Jones, 'Huth, (John) Frederick Andrew [formerly (Johann) Friedrich Andreas] (1774–1864)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 38 (hereafter DNB), pp. 42–4, at p. 43. It has been stated that Frederick 'Huth's reputation was second to none. Notwithstanding his small, slight stature, he had great presence [and] had been known as 'Napoleon of the City'’. The firm, which operated from various premises, latterly 12 Tokenhouse Yard in the City of London (which in due course became the office of the famous stockbroking firm Cazenove & Co), was eventually wound up in 1936, with the partnership of Frederick Huth and Co being dissolved and the business absorbed into the British Overseas Bank Limited (which in turn was itself merged into the Royal Bank of Scotland).
Family The eldest son of Frederick Huth, his elder brother Charles Frederick Huth (1806–1895), also a collector of art,See, e.g., 'Visits to Private Galleries of the British School: The Pictures of Chas. Fredk. Huth, Esq., Upper Harley Street’, The Art Journal, 1857, pp. 90–91 (hereafter Art Journal); and W. Roberts, Memorials of Christie’s: A Record of Art Sales from 1766–1896, 2 vols., London, 1897, II, pp. 262–64. purchased Oakhurst Manor near Tunbridge Wells in Kent where he lived with his wife Frances and their large family. Another brother, Henry (1815–1878), was a noted bibliophile, building a world-renowned collection of books at his home, Wykehurst Place.P. R. Quarrie, ‘Huth, Henry (1815–1878)’, DNB, pp. 44–5. Louis Huth also bought rare books, and sold to his brother a copy of the 1512 Burgos edition of the Cronica del Cid: Quarrie, p. 44. Louis Huth’s own library was sold at Christie’s on 24 and 25 May 1905. It comprised 371 lots, including many first editions of Smollett, Sterne, Fielding and Hazlitt.
Wealth Huth was a Director of The London Assurance for Fire, Life and Marine Assurance, although that seems to have been in a non-executive capacity, and he remained a partner in the firm founded by his father, although he was hardly ever involved in it operations following the death of his father. Huth was extremely wealthy, at his death in 1905 leaving an estate then valued at £341,000.Youssef Cassis. City Bankers, 1890–1941
Homes Huth and his wife, Helen Huth, lived in London at 28 Hertford Street, Mayfair.Chidson, pp. 12–13 Between 1865 and 1869 Huth commissioned the architect Matthew Digby Wyatt to design Possingworth Park, Cross-in-Hand, Waldron, East Sussex, a red-brick neo-gothic mansion, built by the Uckfield firm of Alexander Cheadle. Possingworth served as Huth's country house. Apparently, it contained 'forty-three bedrooms with a wealth of oak panelling and huge, intricately carved stone fireplaces in lofty reception rooms with beautifully moulded and painted ceilings. Squire Huth and his wife brought to Possingworth the graciousness of the Victorian age, holding elegant dinner parties and lavish dances and balls.'See S. Russell, R. Parker and V. Chidson, Waldron: Portrait of a Sussex Village, including photographs from the collection of Barry K. Russell, Tartarus Press, Horam, Sussex, 2000 (hereafter Waldron), p. 49; and Chidson, pp. 14–18. The house, now called Holy Cross Priory, is owned and run by a modern order of nuns, the Sisters of Grace and Compassion, founded for the care of the elderly, and serves as a residential home for around forty elderly patients as well as a centre for respite care. Huth was very generous to the local community near Possingworth, providing a range of social benefits and paying for certain improvements to and objects for the church.Chidson, pp. 24–6.
Character and Marriage to Helen Ogilvy It seems that while as a young man he worked in the firm founded by his father, at least in his early days Huth exhibited little of the work-ethic that characterised his father and which had helped created the financial success of his business; rather Huth, described as ‘frivolous and philandering’ was ‘quite the cock of the roost, a sort of Count D'Orsay; whatever he did immediately became the fashion for all the bucks in town, and when he noticed a young lady (of whom there were a number of pretty ones) her fortune was made.'Andrew Murray, Home From the Hill: A biography of Frederick Huth, "Napoleon of the City", London, 1970 (hereafter Murray) pp. 143, 147. It was obviously something of a relief to his parents when in 1854, at the age of 33 Huth, ‘the great bachelor’, disclosed his secret romance with Helen Ogilvy, aged 17 (daughter of Thomas Ogilvy of Corrimony, Inverness-shire), whom he then married on 11 April the following year.Murray, pp. 207–8. Mrs Huth was some sixteen and a half years younger than her husband, having been born in September 1837.
Huth was apparently endowed with a strong sense of humour and was very particular in aspects of his appearance, so ‘that there cannot be many old men who keep a collection of wigs of different colour, that those around can be warned in time of the changing moods of the wearer!'Murray, p. 120. Huth died at his London house in February 1905 aged 83 after developing pneumonia.Huth’s death and a brief overview of his life and activities as a collector were reported in the ‘Obituary’ section of The Times, 15 February 1905, p. 11. He was buried at the Church of All Saints, Waldron, close to Possingworth.
The Huth's patronage of artists and collecting of art Helen Huth was painted by George Frederic Watts, probably shortly before her marriage, 'looking like a mere girl'Barbara Bryant, G. F. Watts Portraits: Fame and Beauty in Victorian Society, National Portrait Gallery, Ex. Cat, London, 2004 (hereafter Bryant), p. 101. in a painting (formerly in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford) which has now disappeared,The portrait was given in 1941 to the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, by Mrs Huth's second husband, Archibald Barwell How (1860–1947), a classical scholar and Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford. How was one of Huth's friends and an executor of his will. Mrs Huth married him in 1907, two years after the death of Huth, when she was 70 and he only 47. See 'Obituary', 'Mr. A. B. How', The Times, 3 March 1947, p. 6. and he painted her again in a full-length portrait around 1857, two years after her wedding, a portrait that 'enjoyed considerable status as part of the noted collection of modern art featuring the work of Watts and Whistler that the sitter and her husband formed after their marriage in 1855.'Bryant, p. 101. Both Louis and Helen Huth were depicted in recently re-discovered marble portrait busts by a leading sculptor of the Victorian age, Alexander Munro, who had close connections to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood artists, including Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–82). These important busts, both inscribed with Munro’s distinctive monogram, were exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1860, although by 2009 they were recorded as untraced.Ingrid Roscoe, Emma Hardy and M. G. Sullivan (eds.), A Biographical Dictionary of Sculptors in Britain 1660–1851, New Haven and London, 2009 (hereafter Dictionary), p. 865, Nos. 60 and 62. The busts are very finely modelled and carved. The face of the young Helen is beautiful but not idealised. The sculptor has dressed her detailed hair with orange blossom, traditionally an indication by brides of their hope of fecundity, as the orange tree is prolific in its production of fruit; and the blossom, being white, is a symbol of innocence and chastity. Helen Huth was also painted by Watts in a head and shoulders portrait in the early 1860s. The importance of the Huths in Watts' oeuvre of portraits cannot be under-estimated. Apart from four other women, Watts painted more portraits of Helen than any other – four in total – which, as Bryant noted, 'sheds light on the interaction between sitter and portraitist.' Next Helen Huth was painted by Whistler, in a painting entitled Arrangement in black, no. 2: portrait of Mrs Louis Huth, for which Huth paid 600 guineas.Letter from Whistler to Huth, 31 January 1873, University of Glasgow, Special Collections, MS Whistler H339. There are two surviving chalk and pastel drawings by Whistler for the portrait: A. M. Young, Margaret F. MacDonald, R. Spencer and H. Miles, The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler, New Haven and London, 1980 (hereafter Whistler Paintings), p. 75-6, cat. no. 125, Pl. 78; and Margaret F. MacDonald, James McNeill Whistler. Drawings, Pastels and Watercolours. A Catalogue Raisonné, New Haven and London, 1995 (hereafter Whistler Drawings), pp. 165–8, nos. 454 and 455. A. B. How also presented to the Ashmolean Museum in 1941 one of Whistler’s drawings for his portrait of Mrs Huth: Whistler Drawings, no. 455. Painted in 1872-3, some 13 years after the bust by Munro was modelled, the portrait reflects Whistler’s admiration for Velásquez, an appreciation shared by Huth. It was first shown publicly at Mr Whistler's Exhibition, Flemish Gallery, Pall Mall, London, 1874.