Biographies

Henry Bishop (1868 – 1939)

There is an excellent portrait of ” Edward Carpenter ” by Henry Bishop, and a fine little landscape, “Wood-cutting on the Banks of the Yonne,” by the same painter. The portrait is a conscientious piece of work, with subtle colouring and strong lines. It is at once a realistic portrait of the philosopher-poet and, an appreciative interpretation of his personality. I had the good fortune to view a fuller selection of Mr. Bishop’s work at a semi-private exhibition in Chelsea before seeing his exhibits at the New English Gallery, and I had fully recognised the undoubted genius of his earnestly executed work. This is evident in his portraits, but even more so in his landscapes, particularly in those recently brought back from Morocco. He is a painter with a full sense of the qualities of light, and he can put more vitality into that difficult quantity, a white wall, than most painters. He recognises the irridescence of white, and some of his Morocco walls are as radiant as pearls, yet they retain the essential brightness of white clay under the rays of a sub-tropical sun. These canvasses have the rare distinction of impressionism without pose. Thus Holbrook Jackson in The New Age (NA 3.6:117). We have not yet been able to add any biographical information to this statement, nor to find any images of work by Henry Bishop, but we have located additional praise of his work in The New Age (NA 7.12:281), this time from Huntly Carter in the July 21 1910 issue, in which his Moroccan work is given special attention. Two of his portraits are in the National Portrait gallery (Edward Carpenter and Havelock Ellis), but we do not have premission to use images of them here.