Holl entered London’s Royal Academy School at the age of sixteen and won its gold medal for historical painting two years later. He devoted his artistic career to the documentation of working-class life in Victorian England, and to portraiture. In 1867 Holl married Anna Laura Davidson, a watercolour artist. The daughter of the house is a portrait of one of the couple’s four daughters, shown in bed recovering from a serious illness. This painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1879, where it received critical praise. The Magazine of Art noted, for example: ‘The execution is strikingly free, strong and workmanlike.’
Royal Academy, London, 1879, no. 950; Winter Exhibition, Arthur Tooth & Sons, London, 1879, no 51; Exhibition of Oil Paintings by British & European Artists, Centre for Adult Education, Melbourne, 1954, no 13; The First Fifty Years: 19th Century British Art from the Gallery Archives, Melbourne, 1992; Hidden Treasures, David Jones’ Art Gallery, Sydney, 1992.