Self-portrait [Click on the image for more details.]
Sidney Harold Meteyard was born in Wordsley near Stourbridge on November 2, 1868, the son of Oswald George Meateyard and Emma Maria Meateyard, née Rutland. He studied at the Birmingham Central School of Art, primarily under Edward R. Taylor, but also Edward Samuel Harper, and James Valentine Jelley, and became a leading member of the so-called "Birmingham Group," a circle of young artists who emerged in the 1880s. He was very active, exhibiting with the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists, the Royal Academy (1900-1918), the New Gallery, the Liverpool Autumn Exhibitions and the Paris Salon.
Meteyard was made an Associate of the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists in 1902 and a full member in 1908, later serving as its Vice-President (1932-1934) and becoming its Honorary Secretary from 1935 until his death in 1947. He was also a member of the teaching staff of the Birmingham Central School of Arts and Crafts for forty-seven years, from 1886-1933. As such, he was responsible for teaching life drawing as well as enamelling, gesso-work, leatherwork, limoge enamelling, and other crafts.
During this time, he contributed to the murals the "Birmingham Group" painted for the Birmingham Town Hall in 1890, his principal contribution being the panel Laying of the Foundation of the Guildhall. He also contributed to their joint project of illustration, A Book of Pictured Carols, in 1893. In addition, he was a prolific stained-glass designer and a book illustrator. He contributed illustrations to the magazine of the Birmingham Guild of Handicraft, The Quest, from 1894-96, but his best-known illustrations are for Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's The Golden Legend, published in 1910. He was associated with the Birmingham Group of Artist-Craftsmen, and with the Bromsgrove Guild, for whom he designed stained glass. He was responsible for altarpieces at Bordesley in 1916 and Southport in 1921, and designed many First World War memorials, including the Memorial Tablet now in Lichfield Cathedral.
His first marriage was to Lizzie Sarah Fairfax Muckley whom he married in June 1892 but she died on November 9, 1939. He then married his former pupil Kate Eadie in 1940. Meteyard made enamel plaques, often in collaboration with Eadie. He also collaborated with her on stained-glass projects, including for the large memorial window commemorating the Forster family at St. Paul's, Cookhill, which was completed in 1933. Meteyard had lived at 100 Wake Green Road in Birmingham from 1916 until about 1940 but after he married Eadie they moved to Cookhill. Late in life he suffered from failing eyesight and was blind for his final year. Meteyard died on April 4, 1947 at the Malt House, Cookhill, near Alcester in Worcestershire. He was buried in Brandwood End Cemetery, Birmingham.
Bibliography
Christian, John. "Sidney Harold Meteyard." Last Romantics: The Romantic Tradition in British Art—Burne-Jones to Stanley Spencer. London: Lund Humphries in association with the Barbican Art Gallery, 1989.
Crawford, Alan. By Hammer and Hand: the Arts and Crafts Movement in Birmingham. Birmingham: Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery, 1984.
"Obituary (Sidney Harold Meteyard)." The Birmingham Post (7 April 1947).
Wildman, Stephen. The Birmingham School. Birmingham: City Museum and Art Gallery, 1990. /p>
Created 18 March 2026