Henry Taylor Lamb (21 June 1883 – 8 October 1960) was an Australian-born British painter. A follower of
Augustus John
Augustus Edwin John (4 January 1878 – 31 October 1961) was a Welsh painter, draughtsman, and etcher. For a time he was considered the most important artist at work in Britain: Virginia Woolf remarked that by 1908 the era of John Singer Sarg ...
, Lamb was a founder member of the
Camden Town Group
The Camden Town Group was a group of English Post-Impressionist artists founded in 1911 and active until 1913. They gathered frequently at the studio of painter Walter Sickert in the Camden Town area of London.
History
In 1908, critic Frank ...
in 1911 and of the
London Group
The London Group is a society based in London, England, created to offer additional exhibiting opportunities to artists besides the Royal Academy of Arts. Formed in 1913, it is one of the oldest artist-led organisations in the world. It was form ...
in 1913.
Early life
Henry Lamb was born in
Adelaide
Adelaide ( , ; ) is the list of Australian capital cities, capital and most populous city of South Australia, as well as the list of cities in Australia by population, fifth-most populous city in Australia. The name "Adelaide" may refer to ei ...
, South Australia on 21 June 1883, the son of
Sir Horace Lamb , who was the professor of mathematics at Adelaide University.
When Horace Lamb was appointed to the Chair of Mathematics at the
Victoria University of Manchester
The Victoria University of Manchester, usually referred to as simply the University of Manchester, was a university in Manchester, England. It was founded in 1851 as Owens College. In 1880, the college joined the federal Victoria University. A ...
in 1885 the family moved back to England.
Henry Lamb was educated at
Manchester Grammar School
The Manchester Grammar School (MGS) is a highly Selective school, selective Private_schools_in_the_United_Kingdom, private day school for boys aged 7-18 in Manchester, England, which was founded in 1515 by Hugh Oldham (then Bishop of Exeter). ...
, before studying medicine at
Manchester University
The University of Manchester is a public university, public research university in Manchester, England. The main campus is south of Manchester city centre, Manchester City Centre on Wilmslow Road, Oxford Road. The University of Manchester is c ...
Medical School and
Guy's Hospital
Guy's Hospital is an NHS hospital founded by philanthropist Thomas Guy in 1721, located in the borough of Southwark in central London. It is part of Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust and one of the institutions that comprise the Kin ...
in London, but Lamb abandoned medicine in 1906 to study painting at the Chelsea School of Art, then run by
William Orpen
Major (United Kingdom), Major Sir William Newenham Montague Orpen, (27 November 1878 – 29 September 1931) was an Irish artist who mainly worked in London. Orpen was a fine draughtsman and a popular, commercially successful painter of portrai ...
and
Augustus John
Augustus Edwin John (4 January 1878 – 31 October 1961) was a Welsh painter, draughtsman, and etcher. For a time he was considered the most important artist at work in Britain: Virginia Woolf remarked that by 1908 the era of John Singer Sarg ...
.
In 1907, Lamb studied at the
Académie de La Palette
An academy ( Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of tertiary education. The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, founded approximately 386 BC at Akademia, a sanctuary of Athena, th ...
in Paris, an art academy where the painters
Jean Metzinger
Jean Dominique Antony Metzinger (; 24 June 1883 – 3 November 1956) was a major 20th-century French painter, theorist, writer, critic and poet, who along with Albert Gleizes wrote the first theoretical work on Cubism. His earliest works, from 1 ...
,
André Dunoyer de Segonzac and
Henri Le Fauconnier
Henri Victor Gabriel Le Fauconnier (; July 5, 1881 – December 25, 1946) was a French Cubist painter born in Hesdin. Le Fauconnier was seen as one of the leading figures among the Montparnasse Cubists. At the 1911 Salon des Indépendants Le ...
taught.
Lamb met his future wife
Nina Forrest in 1905 during the final term of his medical studies in Manchester and they ran away to London together that summer. A popular story is that Lamb nicknamed her "Euphemia" because of an apparent resemblance to
Mantegna's portrait of
Saint Euphemia; it was however her middle name. They were married in May 1906 when she became pregnant but she lost the baby due to a miscarriage. The relationship was short-lived, but they did not divorce until 1927 shortly before Henry married
Pansy Pakenham.
[
In 1908, 1910 and 1911 Lamb worked in Brittany, where he painted his most famous work, ''Death of a Peasant''.]
World War One
At the start of World War One, Lamb returned to his medical studies and qualified as a doctor at Guy's Hospital. Lamb saw active service in the First World War in the Royal Army Medical Corps
The Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) was a specialist corps in the British Army which provided medical services to all Army personnel and their families, in war and in peace.
On 15 November 2024, the corps was amalgamated with the Royal Army De ...
as a battalion medical officer with the 5th Battalion, The Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers
The Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers was an Ireland, Irish line infantry regiment of the British Army in existence from 1881 until 1968. The regiment was formed in 1881 by the amalgamation of the 27th (Inniskilling) Regiment of Foot and the 108th (Ma ...
and was awarded the Military Cross
The Military Cross (MC) is the third-level (second-level until 1993) military decoration awarded to officers and (since 1993) Other ranks (UK), other ranks of the British Armed Forces, and formerly awarded to officers of other Commonwealth of ...
. Lamb served in Palestine
Palestine, officially the State of Palestine, is a country in West Asia. Recognized by International recognition of Palestine, 147 of the UN's 193 member states, it encompasses the Israeli-occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and th ...
and on the Western Front and was badly gassed not long before the end of the war. In February 1918, before he was demobilised, Lamb was approached by British War Memorials Committee of the Ministry of Information to produce a large painting for a proposed national Hall of Remembrance. After he was demobilised in March 1919, Lamb began work on the painting, ''Irish Troops in the Judaean Hills Surprised by a Turkish Bombardment'', which is now in the Imperial War Museum
The Imperial War Museum (IWM), currently branded "Imperial War Museums", is a British national museum. It is headquartered in London, with five branches in England. Founded as the Imperial War Museum in 1917, it was intended to record the civ ...
.
World War Two
After the war Lamb settled in Poole, Dorset, where he remained for a number of years. In December 1940, he was appointed a full-time war artist to the War Office
The War Office has referred to several British government organisations throughout history, all relating to the army. It was a department of the British Government responsible for the administration of the British Army between 1857 and 1964, at ...
by the War Artists' Advisory Committee The War Artists' Advisory Committee (WAAC), was a British government agency established within the Ministry of Information at the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 and headed by Sir Kenneth Clark. Its aim was to compile a comprehensive artis ...
and throughout the war was to produce a large number of portraits and figure paintings. As well as portraits of high-ranking commanders, Lamb painted servicemen and women, operations at Old Sarum
Old Sarum, in Wiltshire, South West England, is the ruined and deserted site of the earliest settlement of Salisbury. Situated on a hill about north of modern Salisbury near the A345 road, the settlement appears in some of the earliest recor ...
aerodrome and tank training exercises. Throughout the winter of 1941, he was attached to the 12th Canadian Army Tank Battalion, then training in southern England, before doing a series of Auxiliary Territorial Service
The Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS; often pronounced as an acronym) was the women's branch of the British Army during the World War II, Second World War. It was formed on 9 September 1938, initially as a women's voluntary service, and existe ...
and Anti-Aircraft Command
Anti-Aircraft Command (AA Command, or "Ack-Ack Command") was a British Army command of the Second World War that controlled the Territorial Army anti-aircraft artillery and searchlight formations and units defending the United Kingdom.
Origin
...
personnel portraits. The Imperial War Museum held an exhibition of Lamb's wartime work in 1958, and again in 1961.
Recognition
Lamb is noted for his unusual portraits, as exemplified by his well-known picture of an elongated Lytton Strachey
Giles Lytton Strachey (; 1 March 1880 – 21 January 1932) was an English writer and critic. A founding member of the Bloomsbury Group and author of ''Eminent Victorians'', he established a new form of biography in which psychology, psychologic ...
. He was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy
The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is an art institution based in Burlington House in Piccadilly London, England. Founded in 1768, it has a unique position as an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects. Its ...
in 1940 and was made a full Member in 1949. He was a Trustee of the National Portrait Gallery National Portrait Gallery may refer to:
* National Portrait Gallery (Australia), in Canberra
* National Portrait Gallery (Sweden), in Mariefred
*National Portrait Gallery (United States), in Washington, D.C.
*National Portrait Gallery, London
...
from 1942 and of the Tate Gallery
Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the UK ...
from 1944 to 1951. His auction record was set at Christie's in London in June 2006 when his 1910 ''Breton Boy'' oil on panel fetched £60,000. As well as the Imperial War Museum, works by Lamb are held in regional museums throughout Britain, in the British Government Art Collection and in the National Gallery of Canada
The National Gallery of Canada (), located in the capital city of Ottawa, Ontario, is Canada's National museums of Canada, national art museum. The museum's building takes up , with of space used for exhibiting art. It is one of the List of large ...
, which received the majority of Lamb's portraits of Canadian troops at the end of World War Two.
Personal life
Lamb married Lady Pansy Pakenham, a daughter of the 5th Earl of Longford, in 1928, and they had a son and two daughters, including the landscape gardener Henrietta Phipps, and the journalist Valentine Lamb. Lamb was a friend of Lady Ottoline Morrell
Lady Ottoline Violet Anne Morrell (née Cavendish-Bentinck; 16 June 1873 – 21 April 1938) was an English Aristocracy (class), aristocrat and society hostess. Her patronage was influential in artistic and intellectual circles, where she befri ...
. He died on 8 October 1960 at the Spire Nursing Home in Salisbury, Wiltshire at the age of 77.
The character and appearance of the composer Lewis Dodd in Margaret Kennedy's '' The Constant Nymph'' was based on Lamb, who was a gifted pianist. Kennedy's cousin George was one of Lamb's oldest friends.[Violet Powell. ''The Constant Novelist: a study of Margaret Kennedy, 1896-1967'' (1983), p. 57-68]
Lamb's siblings included the classicist Walter Lamb and the archaeologist Dorothy Lamb. His nephew was the climatologist Hubert Lamb
Hubert Horace Lamb (22 September 1913 in Bedford – 28 June 1997 in Holt, Norfolk, Holt, Norfolk) was an English climatologist who founded the Climatic Research Unit in 1972 in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East A ...
and his great-nephew was the Liberal Democrat
Several political parties from around the world have been called the Liberal Democratic Party, Democratic Liberal Party or Liberal Democrats. These parties have usually followed liberalism as ideology, although they can vary widely from very progr ...
politician Norman Lamb
Sir Norman Peter Lamb (born 16 September 1957) is a British politician and solicitor. He was the Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament (MP) for North Norfolk from 2001 to 2019, and was the chair of the Science and Technology Select Commit ...
.
References and sources
;References
;Sources
* Clements, Keith (1985) ''Henry Lamb: the Artist and his Friends''
Stanford ''Family Ghosts''
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lamb, Henry
1883 births
1960 deaths
20th-century English painters
English male painters
Australian painters
Australian war artists
British Army personnel of World War I
English portrait painters
English war artists
People educated at Manchester Grammar School
Australian people of English descent
Artists from Adelaide
Post-impressionist painters
Recipients of the Military Cross
Royal Academicians
World War I artists
20th-century British war artists
World War II artists
Royal Army Medical Corps officers
Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers officers
20th-century English male artists
Australian emigrants to the United Kingdom