Henry John Boddington (1811 – 11 April 1865) was an English landscape painter.
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Boddington was born Henry John Williams in St Marylebone, London, the second son of painter Edward Williams (1782–1855) and his wife Anne (née Hildebrand, 1780–1851). He had five brothers, all of whom became landscape painters. His paternal grandfather, Edward Williams, an engraver, married a sister of James Ward R.A., the animal painter, and hence he was related to George Morland R.A., and H B Chalon, who married other sisters of James Ward, and to John Jackson R.A., who married Ward's daughter.
Boddington had no formal academy training - what teaching he had he received from his father, in whose studio he worked from childhood. In 1832, when just of age, he married Clarissa (Clara) Eliza Boddington (daughter of John Boddington), and adopted her surname, becoming Henry John Boddington, in order to distinguish his work from that of his brothers and other relatives; They had one child, Edwin Henry Boddington, (14 October 1836, Islington – 1905), who also became a painter.[1] After a few years of great poverty and struggle, Henry John became a very prosperous artist. He lived first at Pentonville, then moved to Fulham, then Hammersmith, and finally in 1854 to Barnes, then in Surrey.
His earliest pictures depicted the scenery of Surrey and the banks of the Thames. Work of his was first exhibited at the Royal Academy, London in 1837, and from 1839 onwards one or two of his pictures were exhibited there every year until his death and four years after it. He showed even more paintings at the Society of British Artists in Suffolk Street. His name appears for the first time in the catalogue for 1837, and in 1842 became a member of the society (RBA), afterwards exhibiting there an average of ten pictures a year until his death. In 1843 he visited Devonshire, staying at Ashburton; in 1846 the English Lake District; and in 1847, for the first time, North Wales, which, especially the country around Betws-Y-Coed and Dolgelly, became his favourite working-ground. Boddington also painted in Scotland, Yorkshire, and other parts of England, but never travelled to the continent.
The Dictionary of National Biography described Boddington as "of a humorous, amiable, and manly character". After suffering for several years from a progressive disease of the brain, he died at his home in Barnes on 11 April 1865.
Boddington developed his own style, characterised by a remarkable ability to depict the foliage of backlit trees. Jan Reynolds observed that one of his "most characteristic effects is the appearance of a warm day, with the sun just out of the picture, giving a filmy, hazy atmosphere to the landscape, with deep blue shadows adding greater value to the opposing tone of yellow. The distant mountains are melting in vapory sunlight. The artist is a master of this effect..."[2] Like many Victorian painters, he worked on a grand scale. The Fine Arts Quarterly Review (Vol. 3, 1865) noted that he "painted pictures not only large, but sometimes grand. His landscapes of mountains, lake and river had scenic breadth and power..." [3] His paintings mostly depict peaceful English country scenes. He was a very rapid sketcher.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: "Boddington, Henry John". Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.