Harold Thomas Hartley was an English journalist, publisher, mineral water manufacturer, and professional organiser of exhibitions. He was closely associated with Joseph Lyons and the early development of the J. Lyons & Co. catering company. He was also a noted art collector and bibliophile.
Early life and family
Harold Hartley was born in London on 28 October 1851, the eldest son of T.H.P. Hartley. He was educated at the City of London College. In 1878 he married Katie Brewer, the eldest daughter of Francis Brewer from which marriage he had a son, Harold Brewer Hartley, who had a distinguished career as a chemist and was knighted in 1928. Katie died in 1884 and Harold remarried, to the eldest daughter of the civil engineer Rowland Mason Ordish.
Career
Hartley's early career was in the wine trade and in trade journalism on Fleet Street on The Milk Journal. He was a partner in the firm of Emmott, Hartley & Company, publishers and founders of the Warehousemen and Drapers' Trade Journal and the Chambers of Commerce Chronicle. He was early on involved in the world of exhibitions when he worked on advertising for the Vienna World Exposition of 1873. He bought a partnership in an old mineral water firm and became the owner of the Pure Water Company. It was through supplying aerated water to the builders of the Imperial Institute, that he met Joseph Lyons. As Hartley told it in his memoirs, Eighty-eight: Not out :
One evening later on Lyons, who had never travelled, asked me if I had ever been to Venice, as he had an idea that it might be reproduced with its canals in an attractive form. Being well acquainted with Venice, I at once realized its possibilities and thus "Venice in London" was born. Visions of the Grand Canal, with its churches, palaces, and gondolas flashed through my mind.
In 1891–93, with Lyons, he staged Venice in London at Olympia. The show was designed and directed by the theatrical impresario Imre Kiralfy who specialised in spectacular events and lent his name to the production to increase its appeal to the public. It required the import of 100 gondolas from Venice with Venetian gondoliers. Hartley went on to organise the Indian, Victorian Era, Greater Britain, and Military exhibitions. He retired in 1909 rather than compete with the newly created White City.
Collecting
Hartley collected a wide variety of printed material such as magazine illustrations, posters, manuscripts, letters and illustrated books. He owned letters from Oscar Wilde. He donated some prints and medals to the British Museum in 1925 and 1936 respectively, among other donations to other institutions including the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge and Tate, London. In 1955, his collection of illustrated books of the 1860s was sold by his son to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. In 1903, he was one of the founders of The Burlington Magazine.
