Sir Henry Cole
Born 15 July 1808
Died 18 April 1882
Active: 1837 - 1879
Country of birth and death: England
Civil servant, exhibition organiser, museum director, educationalist
Born in Bath. Died in London.
Henry Cole was the first director of the South Kensington Museum (now the V&A). He was a driving force behind the Great Exhibition and the formation of many of the institutions at south Kensington.
His obituary in 'The Times' stated: 'Great national movements like that which has produced the South Kensington Museum and all that it represents in the social life of our time, are, no doubt, due to causes deeper and more universal than the energy of any individual. But the instinct is nevertheless sound in the main which identifies South Kensington with Sir Henry Cole as its creator and chief representative. He was amongst the first to discern and insist upon the paramount need for the organization of national art, and the development of its relations to the national industry. He was the leading spirit and prime mover of the impulse which, beginning with the Exhibition of 1851 and earlier, has since produced such abundant results. We need only to reflect on the contrast between the present condition of national taste and that which prevailed not merely in the region of art itself, but in all the departments of technical industry in 1851, the order to form an estimate of the vast influence exercised by Sir Henry Cole.'
Wealth at death: £7,689 13s. 8d.
Probate date: 27 May 1882
Institutional and Business Connections
Director of Government School of Design (London)
1853 (Circa)
Listed as Superintendent of General Management for the Department of Practical Art.
Director of Victoria and Albert Museum
1856 - 1873
Personal and Professional Connections
Colleague of John Bell
1846 (Circa) - 1870 (Circa)
Friends and colleagues on a variety of projects, the last record of their meeting is in Cole's diary of 1870.
Sources
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
2004
Ann Cooper, ‘Cole, Sir Henry (1808–1882)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edn, Jan 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/5852, accessed 27 Aug 2010]
The Times Digital Archive 1785-1985
2008
Obituary of Sir Henry Cole from
The Times, 20 April 1882
(Issue 30486. © The Times 1882) freely accessible on the Victoria and Albert Museum website: http://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/periods_styles/features/history/directors/henry_cole/index.html (accessed 28 August 2010)
Citing this record
'Sir Henry Cole', Mapping the Practice and Profession of Sculpture in Britain and Ireland 1851-1951, University of Glasgow History of Art and HATII, online database 2011 [http://sculpture.gla.ac.uk/view/person.php?id=msib4_1267715518, accessed 24 Sep 2023]
