SIMPSON, Henry

1851 - 1921

Henry Simpson was born in Penrith, Cumbria in 1851, and baptised at Plumpton-on-Wall, Cumbria, son of John Simpson, grocer & draper and a farmer, and his wife Nancy. In 1861, his father John was a widower, living at Plumpton Wall, Penrith with his three sons, Joseph 19, Henry 9 and Robert 6. By 1881 his father's farm at Plumpton Wall had been taken by Henry's elder brother Joseph, where 29-year-old Henry is noted as an artist. Henry studied at the Slade School of Fine Art and in 1887 he joined the New English Art Club. Simpson was a friend and correspondent of James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) and in 1889 was among those included in the preliminary preparations for a meal to be held at the Criterion on 1 May in celebration of Whistler's honorary membership of the Royal Academy in Munich, Henry was then living at Trafalgar Studios on Manresa Road, Chelsea sharing a studio with Richard Walter Sickert. Landscape, coastal, architectural, genre and figure painter his works include 'Head of a Young Girl' (Musée Mesdag, La Haye) and who exhibited at the Royal Academy also exhibiting at the Royal Institute of Oil Painters; Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours; Grosvenor Gallery; New Gallery; Fine Art Society; Dudley Gallery; New English Art Club; Society of British Artists also at the Royal Hibernian Academy in Dublin; Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts; Walker Art Gallery; Leicester Galleries and Manchester Art Gallery. His solo exhibition at Leicester Galleries, London in April 1910 went unnoticed owing to the death of King Edward VII and abandoned by his wife, he left England for Italy, Greece and the Middle East and lived for some years with the British consul in Egypt paying his way in selling his paintings. Henry Simpson died in Egypt in utter poverty in 1921 and reputable buried back in Suffolk in 1921. Several of his works were retrieved from his hosts in Egypt and successfully exhibited in London in 1965.

'British Water Colour Artists' (1975) has this artist as
Born at Nacton, near Ipswich, Suffolk in 1853. A genre landscape and coastal painter who lived in London and exhibited from 1875. He lived in Suffolk and painted in Holland and Normandy. An exhibition of his work, including architectural and oriental subjects, was held at the Leicester Galleries in April 1910'. He died in London in 1921. I have found no Henry Simpson births in Suffolk in 1853 or any deaths in London in 1921.

Royal Academy Exhibits
from 98 Gower Street, Bedford Square, London
1878 946 A Pilgrim
from c/o Messrs. Kennedy, 63 Huntley Street, Gower Street, London
1979 383 The Mower
from 10 Trafalgar Studios, Manresa Road, Chelsea
1884 38 Waiting for the Boats, Scheveningen
1886 1016 From his Soldier Boy
from c/o Chapman Brothers, 241 King's Road, Chelsea
1912 1035 An Apennine Bridge - watercolour

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Works by This Artist