Thomas Hennell

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Thomas Hennell - British artist and writer

Contents

[edit] 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 [1] 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

[edit] 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 offereiong hios 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. Hennels artist works centred on the countryside, and in oparticular hedging, threashing, baling, and clearing orchard etc. [1] 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}} [2]

[edit] 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) [3]
  • The Countryman at Work written and illustrated by Thomas Hennell. [2]
  • 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 [4]

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ^ From a copy of the Britain in Pictures series and published by Collins in 1943
  2. ^ Detail taken from a copy of book in question published by J M Dent (London) in 1945