St. Satur

Location

Country: UK
City: London
Place: Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, Whitehall

Henry Lamb was born in Adelaide, Australia, the fifth of seven children born to Sir Horace Lamb, mathematician and physicist, and his wife, Elizabeth Mary. However, Henry spent most of his childhood in Manchester after his family relocated to the city in 1886, where his father taught at the University. Despite an unhappy time at school, he obtained a Manchester University scholarship to study medicine from 1901. However, following a revelatory visit to Italy in 1904, Lamb abandoned his studies and enrolled at the Chelsea School of Art, which at that time was led by the painters, Augustus John and Sir William Orpen. In 1907, Lamb visited Paris with the John family and studied for a year at L'École de la Palette under the Anglophile French painter, Jacques-Emile Blanche. Lamb worked in Brittany in the summers of 1910 and 1911, and in Ireland in 1912–13. He became a member of the Camden Town Group of Artists in 1911–12, and joined the London Group in 1913. At the start of the First World War, Lamb returned to study medicine. Qualifying in July 1916, he then served as a Medical Officer until the end of the War. During this period, he also held a position as an Official War Artist. He was invalided home after being gassed and later awarded the Military Cross in 1918. After the War, Lamb regularly exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1921: he was elected RA in 1949. With the start of the Second World War, he worked again as an Official War Artist and painted many portraits of servicemen and military attachés. Towards the end of his life, and suffering from arthritis, Lamb had to abandon painting landscapes, focusing instead on still life. He died in a nursing home in Salisbury on 8 October 1960.

Places

France, Cher, Saint-Satur

Subjects

topography, townscape/cityscape, Camden Town Group, tree, sunlight, woman, gate, street, house, wall

Materials & Techniques

board, oil, oil painting

Artist

Henry Lamb (1883 - 1960)

Title

St. Satur

Date

1949

Medium

Oil on canvas

Dimensions

height: 39.50 cm, width: 49.50 cm

Acquisition

Purchased from Leicester Galleries, December 1956

Inscription

br: Lamb / 49

Provenance

Consigned by the artist to Leicester Galleries, London; from whom purchased by the Ministry of Works in December 1956

GAC number

3657