Charles Edward Hallé was the son of Sir Charles Hallé, pianist, conductor, and founder of the Hallé Orchestra. Hallé was born in Paris, and came to England at the time of the revolution of 1848. Much of his young adulthood was spent in Italy, but back in London he established himself as a portrait painter while also attempting imaginative and literary themes.

He is best known to art-history as the co-director, with Joseph Comyns Carr, of the Grosvenor Gallery, launched in New Bond Street in 1877 as a liberal alternative to the Royal Academy and a showcase for the more radical aspects of late Victorian art. Furthermore, when the Grosvenor ran into financial difficulties and lost its integrity, it was Hallé, again in tande...