Henry Taylor Lamb MC RA was an Australian-born British painter. He was a follower of Augustus John, and a founder member of the Camden Town Group in 1911 and of the London Group in 1913. Born on June 21, 1883, in Adelaide, Australia, Lamb was the son of Sir Horace Lamb FRS, a professor of mathematics at Adelaide University. When his father was appointed to the Chair of Mathematics at the Victoria University of Manchester in 1885, the family moved back to England.
Early Life and Education
Lamb was educated at
Manchester Grammar School, before studying medicine at
Manchester University Medical School and
Guy's Hospital in London. However, he abandoned medicine in 1906 to study painting at the
Chelsea School of Art, then run by
William Orpen and
Augustus John. In 1907, Lamb studied at the
Académie de La Palette in Paris, an art academy where the painters
Jean Metzinger,
André Dunoyer de Segonzac, and
Henri Le Fauconnier taught.
Artistic Career
Lamb met his future wife
Nina Forrest in 1905 during the final term of his medical studies in Manchester. They ran away to London together that summer, and he nicknamed her "Euphemia" because of an apparent resemblance to
Mantegna's portrait of Saint Euphemia. They were married in May 1906 when she became pregnant, but she lost the baby due to a miscarriage. The relationship was short-lived, and 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. At the start of World War One, Lamb returned to his medical studies and qualified as a doctor at
Guy's Hospital. He saw active service in the First World War in the
Royal Army Medical Corps as a battalion medical officer with the
5th Battalion, The Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers and was awarded the
Military Cross.
Lamb served in Palestine and on the Western Front and was badly gassed not long before the end of the war. In February 1918, before he was demobilized, Lamb was approached by the
British War Memorials Committee of the Ministry of Information to produce a large painting for a proposed national Hall of Remembrance. After he was demobilized 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.
In December 1940, Lamb was appointed a full-time war artist to the
War Office by the
War Artists' Advisory Committee and throughout the war produced 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 aerodrome, and tank training exercises.
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 died on October 8, 1960, at the
Spire Nursing Home in Salisbury, Wiltshire, at the age of 77.
Important works by Henry Lamb can be found at https://WahooArt.com/@/HenryLamb, including his most famous work,
Death of a Peasant. More information about the artist and his works can be found on https://WahooArt.com.