(b Kotagiri, Madras, India, March 13, 1836; d London, Nov 25, 1875).
English painter and illustrator. He played a leading role in the renaissance of wood-engraved illustration during the so-called golden decade of English book illustration (c. 1860–75), when a new school of artists overcame the limitations of the medium. Deeply influenced by the idealism of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, he imbued both his paintings and drawings with a haunting blend of poetic realism. He was the fourth son of Captain John Michael Houghton (1797–1874), who served in the East India Company’s Marine as a draughtsman.
Houghton was admitted to the Royal Academy Schools, London, in 1854 but did not pass further than the Life School. He received additional training at J. M. Leigh’s academy and its convivial corollary, the Langham Artists’ Society, which was then a forcing-house for young impoverished painters who wished to have a foot in both publishing and the fine arts. There, with older artists such as Charles Keene and John Tenniel, he learnt to run the race against time with a set weekly subject. Keene, already a well-known contributor to ...
