Harold Piffard

Harold Hume Piffard (10 August 1867 – 17 January 1939) was a British artist, illustrator, and one of the first British aviators. He studied art at the Royal Academy Schools in London, exhibiting his first painting at the Royal Academy in 1895. He painted a wide variety of subjects in oils and watercolour, including history paintings. At the same time he worked as an illustrator, both for periodicals such as The Strand Magazine and The Illustrated London News, and illustrating novels. From 1907 he became interested in aviation, and began flying in 1909 in an aircraft he built himself. He made his first flights in West London near his Chiswick home; in 1910 he flew at Shoreham-by-Sea, near his old school, Lancing College.

Personal life

Harold Hume Piffard was born in Marylebone, the sixth son of Charles Piffard and his wife Emily, née Hume, the daughter of James Hume, a barrister and Magistrate at Calcutta. They had married in Calcutta on 1 June 1858. Charles was Clerk of the Crown in the High Court of Calcutta; Piffard's four eldest brothers were all born in India. Harold was educated at Lancing College, being sent there together with his older brother Lawrence in 1877. He briefly ran away from school to find employment on the stage, sleeping on the Embankment for several nights while he visited theatres and music halls. They had four children. Helena died soon after giving birth to her fourth child in 1900; the baby died a few months later. Piffard died on 17 January 1939.

Artist

Painter

Piffard painted a wide variety of subjects in both oils and watercolour.

Illustrator

Piffard started his work as an illustrator in 1894 with contributions to periodicals including The Strand Magazine, The Illustrated London News and The Penny Pictorial Magazine. He began to illustrate books in 1895, eventually illustrating over a hundred novels, many of them for the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, Guy Boothby, Harry Collingwood, Mrs. Henry Wood, Richard Marsh, Max Pemberton, and J. M. Neale. From 1908 he illustrated a series of classics for Collins including works by Thackeray, Dickens, and George Eliot. He managed to get the plane airborne and fly "a foot or two from the ground for a distance of a hundred yards or so."

A local cinematograph company asked to film a flight, and he confidently accepted; Colin Manton describes this as characteristic hubris.