This page is a work in progress, and will be updated with additional information about Sir John Aird.

Relationship to john william waterhouse:

Collector, owner of Whispered Words and Offerings to the Gods.

Brief Biography:

AIRD, Sir John (1833-1911) 

Born in London, of Scottish descent. Engineer. Builder of the famous Aswan Dam across the Nile. Collector of modern British art. Lived in a mansion facing Hyde Park (14 Hyde Park Terrace) and at Wilton Park, Bucks. Conservative Member of Parliament for Paddington, North. Created a baronet in 1901.

DOCUMENTED RELATIONSHIP:

- Owner of Whispered Words and Offerings to the Gods:

"Unlike many picture collectors, Mr. Aird has never regarded his "hobby" in the light of an investment. It has been from the first a labour of love. To borrow a well-worn phrase, he has bought his pictures "to live with." They are not arranged in the formal lines of a gallery; they adorn every room of the house; its doors, its lobbies, and its staircases to the very top, are ornamented with them. They are, therefore, the daily companions and friends of their owner, and of his family and their friends. Many of them have owed their execution of his own suggestion; others have been specially painted by their artists for the places where they now hang; every one seems to bear the impress of care and forethought which have selected them on account of some definite and precise reason, not very far to find. It may be stated at once that nearly all Mr. Aird's pictures are of the modern English school.
...
On either side of the large folding doors hangs a work of Mr. J. W. Waterhouse's. One is 'Whispered Words', a Greek girl and her lover standing in colloquy together, the artist's earliest success, and its companion, 'Offerings to the Gods.'

Source: 'The Private Art Collections of London', The Art Journal, May 1891