Merry Christmas and a happy New Year from John Callcott Horsley

From 1823 until his death in 1903, the painter John Callcott Horsley lived in 128 Kensington Church Street (known as 1 High Row, Church Lane until the 1870s). He had moved in there with his family when he was only six years old. 

In early December 1843, when he was an unknown but aspiring artist of 22, Horsley was approached by a family friend, the very energetic 35-year-old entrepreneur Henry Cole, who also lived in Kensington and three years earlier had been involved in the creation of the modern pre-paid postage system and the world’s first postage stamp. Cole eventually became known for creating the Great Exhibition together with Prince Albert and for creating the whole museum area in South Kensington. He also became the first director of the V&A. 

Christmas was a busy time in the Cole household, with unanswered mail piling up, and Cole was an energetic man with lots of ideas popping up all the time: “What if I could print a card with a nice illustration, that I and my wife could just sign and address, instead of writing hundreds of personal Christmas notes?” So Cole asked young Horsley for help. 

On 17 December, Horsley came home to Cole with his design: three generations of the Cole family raising a toast, surrounded by a decorative trellis and black and white scenes depicting acts of giving, thus conveying a message of celebration and charity. Cole was delighted and commissioned a printer to make a thousand copies that could be personalised with a hand-written greeting. All cards not needed by Cole’s family were offered for sale at a price of a shilling each, which was a very high price at the time. However, each card was hand-coloured, which explains it. 

These were the world’s first printed Christmas cards, and when inexpensive chromolithography colour printing was introduced from France a few years later, the Horsley-Cole card idea was quickly copied by every other publisher and printer, and soon thousands of different Christmas cards were available every year. 

A shorter version of this article was first published in the Kensington Society 2021 winter newsletter.