Thomas Hennell

Thomas Hennell - British artist and writer

Early Biography

Hennell was born in Ridley in Kent (UK) and studied at Regent Street Polytechnic, and qualified as a teacher and taught for several years. He suffered a nervous breakdown and became an inmate the Maudsley Hospital Detail obtained from http://collection.britishcouncil.org/html/artist/artist.aspx?id=18493 ] Additional biographic detail suggests that Hennell died in the hands of terrorists in Java, and that he spent his early life at his father's Rectory at Ash in Kent, as well as Ridley. That initially he was an Art master at a boys' school in Bath. That he never married and wedded himself to his Art

Artist Biography

He started writing at the urging of Edward Bawden, another artist, but at the outbreak of war in 1939 he wriote to the War Artists Advisory Commission offering his services as an artist. He travelled to Iceland and France, and was finally sent to the Far East, where he died in mysterious circumstances in 1945. Hennell's art works centred on the countryside, and in particular hedging, threashing, baling, and clearing orchards etc. Additional material suggests that Hennell was a member of The Royal Watercolour Society, and exhibited in The New English Art Club. As an artist he recorded the surrender of Singapore in [WWII From a book published by The Architectural Press (London) in 1947 with a memoir of Hennell by H J Massingham]

Bibliography

* "Thomas Hennell Countryman, artist and Writer" by Michael Macleod and published by CUP (Cambridge University Press) in the ( [UK) 1988.
* "Change in the Farm" by Thomas Hennell
* "The Wilderness" by Thomas Hennell (Account of his Illness while in Hospital)
* "British Craftsmen" (General Editor W J Turner - A study of the work of Thomas Hennell) [ From a copy of the Britain in Pictures series and published by Collins in 1943 ]
* "The Countryman at Work" written and illustrated by Thomas Hennell.
* "Country Relics" by H J Massingham (Illustrated by Hennell)
* "The Witnesses" (1936 - With wood-engravings by Eric Ravilious
* "Poems of Thomas Hennell"
* "Recording Britain" (published by CUP Cambridge University Press in 1946
* "The Natural Order" (Essays in The Return to Husbandry - Edited by H.J Massingham) and illustrated by Thomas Hennell [ Detail taken from a copy of book in question published by J M Dent (London) in 1945 ]

Footnotes

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