Sidney Harold Meteyard [commonly known as Sidney Meteyard; and as S.H. Meteyard] was born Sidney Harold Meatyard [1] in Stourbridge, Worcestershire, England on 30 November 1868. By 1871 he had moved with his family to Wordsley, Staffordshire. He later moved to Birmingham and studied under Edward Samuel Harper, James Valentine Jelley and Edward Richard Taylor at Birmingham Central School of Art. In 1890, he was one of a group of students at the school chosen to paint mural decorations at Birmingham Town Hall. The project was the subject of an article in The Studio ['The wall paintings by art students in the Town Hall, Birmingham' The Studio vol. 1, September 1893 pp. 237-240]
He subsequently worked as a painter and stained glass designer. Meteyard was much influenced by the Pre-Raphaelites, notably by the work of Edward Burne-Jones, He was associated with the informal gathering of local artists known as the Birmingham Group of Artist-Craftsmen, who included Joseph Southall and Arthur Gaskin, and the more regulated Bromsgrove Guild for whom he worked on stained glass commissions.
He exhibited regularly at the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists between 1896 and 1937. He also exhibited at the Royal Academy and New Gallery in London; Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool; and at the Paris Salon. He participated in exhibitions of the exhibitions of the Arts & Crafts Exhibition Society in London in 1893, 1903, and 1906, and in the British Arts and Crafts Section at the Ghent International Exhibition in 1913. He was elected a member of the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists in 1908 and was Vice-president of Royal Birmingham Society of Artists from 1932 to 1934
Meteyard contributed illustrations to The Yellow Book, and to Birmingham Guild of Handicrafts' short-lived periodical The Quest. He also illustrated an edition of The Golden Legend Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1910).
Following World War One he designed several war memorials. "He executed the Roll of Honour, now in the Hall of Memory, of those from Birmingham who made the ultimate sacrifice in the 1914-1918 war. He did a similar work, now in St Paul’s Cathedral for the Royal Engineers. He also executed the Memorial Tablet now in Lichfield Cathedral. He designed stained glass windows for many churches. The panels that were formerly on each side of the organ in the Town Hall, and are now in the Historical Museum of Canon Hill Park, were also his work" [Obituary notice: The Birmingham Post 7 April 1947]
He taught design and life drawing at Birmingham Municipal School of Art, Central School for forty-five years.
In 1940 he married the jewellery designer and craftswoman Kate Edie (1880-1945), with whom he had previously collaborated on stained glass commissions. Towards the end of his life Meteyard was blighted by poor eyesight, He died at Malt House, Cookhill, Alcester, Worcestershire on 4 April 1947.
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[1] It is unclear when he changed his name to Meteyard. His surname still appears as Meatyard in the 1881 England and Wales census.
