We’re very grateful indeed to Yvonne Cresswell for sharing the breadth and the depth of her research into William Hoggatt (1879-1961) : Artist and Champion for the Preservation of the Manx Countryside. Hoggatt was born in Lancaster and enjoyed an art education at the Storey Institute in Lancaster, rather than taking up a scholarship at the Royal Academy of Art. He studied stained glass design in Lancaster, but through the sponsorship of one of the Storey family was able to study at the Academie Julian in Paris. After returning to work in Lancaster, he went on to work at the Tate in London.
Early in 1907, Hoggatt and his wife-to-be, Dazine Archer, came to the Isle of Man, where in April they married at Rushen Church. Hoggatt was particularly drawn to the Manx landscape with its ever-changing light and season, and he quickly became known as a Manx artist. Apart from appearing in many of his paintings, often tending goats and other animals, Dazine was instrumental in arranging for framing and sending out paintings for exhibitions and sales to many galleries, particularly in, but by no means restricted to, the north of England.
The Hoggatt Sunday soirees were attended by the great and the good, to whom Hoggatt emphasised the importance of the Manx countryside and the necessity of protecting it against unsympathetic development. He was a founder member in 1938 of the Society for the Preservation of the Manx Countryside.
William Hoggatt’s work was widely recognised, appreciated and greatly valued for its quality, and was often used for presentations to notable visitors, with its lovingly portrayed Manx scenes. He reverted to his early training with his design for a T E Brown memorial stained glass window in the Manx Museum in 1934.