Selwyn Image was born in Bodiam, East Sussex, England on 17 February 1849. Between 1868 and 1872 he attended New College, Oxford where he studied drawing under John Ruskin, who was appointed the first Slade Professor of Fine Art in 1870. After graduating, Image moved to London where he lived for the rest of his life. In 1873 Image he was ordained a priest and over the next seven years was curate at All Hallows, Tottenham and St Anne's, Soho. During these years he began to design stained glass, exhibiting examples of his work at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1878. He resigned from Holy Orders in 1882 and thereafter devoted his life to the pursuit of art. In addition to stained glass, he designed mosaics, embroideries, bookplates and book bindings.
Image was also a painter and exhibited at the Fine Art Society and the International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers in London.
Image was elected a member of the Art Workers Guild and was Master of the Guild in 1900. He was also a member the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society with whom he exhibited, and of the Fitzroy Picture Society, a short-lived but influential group of Arts & Crafts designers whose aim was to dispense with what they saw as the elitist attitudes of the Arts and Crafts movement, and in doing so introduce its beauty to the masses.
From 1910 to 1916 he was Slade Professor of Fine Arts at Oxford. He died in London, England on 21 August 1930.
Text source: Arts + Architecture Profiles from Art History Research net (AHRnet) https://www.arthistoryresearch.net/
