Eric Henri Kennington RA (12 March 1888 – 13 April 1960) was an English Sculptor, artist and illustrator, and an official war artist in both World Wars.
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He was born in Chelsea, London, the son of the well-known genre and portrait painter, Thomas Benjamin Kennington (1856–1916), an active member of the New English Art Club. He was educated at St Paul's School and the Lambeth School of Art.
Kennington first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1908.
At the start of World War I, Kennington enlisted with the 13th (Kensington) Battalion London Regiment. He fought on the Western Front, but was wounded and discharged as unfit in June 1915. During his convalescence, he produced The Kensingtons at Laventie, Winter 1914, a portrait of a group of infantrymen.[1] When exhibited in the spring of 1916, its portrayal of exhausted soldiers caused a sensation. Painted in reverse on glass, the painting is now in the Imperial War Museum and was widely praised for its technical virtuosity, iconic colour scheme, and its ‘stately presentation of human endurance, of the quiet heroism of the rank and file’.[2] Kennington returned to the front in 1917 as an official war artist.
Kennington regarded himself chiefly as a sculptor, creating a number of memorials, including one to his friend T. E. Lawrence. He produced the illustrations for Lawrence's The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. He was one of the six pallbearers at Lawrence's funeral in 1935. Kennington also created many pastel portraits and lithographs.
His work as a sculptor includes the War Memorial to the 24th Division in Battersea Park 1924, and allegorical reliefs on the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, Stratford on Avon, 1930.
Kennington again became an official war artist during the World War II, personally commissioned to do work for the Ministry of Information by Edwin Embleton. Darracott and Loftus describe how in both wars "his drawings and letters show him to be an admirer of the heroism of ordinary men and women", an admiration which is particularly notable in the poster series "Seeing it Through".
His last work, which was completed on his death by his assistant Eric Stanford, was a stone relief panel that decorates the James Watt South Building in the University of Glasgow.
Kennington is buried in the churchyard in Checkendon, Oxfordshire, where he was churchwarden and is commemorated on a memorial in Brompton Cemetery, London.
In 1922, he married Edith Cecil, with whom he had a son and a daughter. Edith, who was already married, fell in love with Kennington while he was painting her husband's picture. They both remained good friends with Edith's ex-husband.
Jonathan Black. The Sculpture of Eric Kennington (Lund Humphries, November 2002).