Biographies

Henry Herbert La Thangue (1857 – 1929) The name looks French, but he was English and went to Dulwich College. From their Web pages: At Dulwich La Thangue was a pupil of J.C.L. Sparkes and worked with fellow painters Stanhope Forbes and Frederick Goodall. He enrolled briefly at the Lambeth School of Art before entering the Royal Academy schools. In December 1879 he was awarded a gold medal and a travelling scholarship which enabled him to study at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris. While there he was influenced by the rustic naturalist painters of the Salon and by Whistler. La Thangue worked on the Brittany coast with Forbes and a wide circle of plein-air painters. He lived for a time in Norfolk, painting picturesque scenes of Fenland life in a characteristic square-brush manner. The subject matter and scale of this work echoed that of the Newlyn School, while the social realism of some of his subjects caused some controversy. Later, under the influence of French Impressionism, he travelled to Provence and Liguria. Scenes from these travels gradually infiltrated his work as he increasingly regretted the decline of village life in England. A one-man show in 1914 included a wide selection of landscapes from southern Europe, while the last works were dominated by scenes of Mediterranean orange groves and gardens. La Thangue was elected to the Royal Academy in 1912. He was one of the founders of the New English Art Club, whose members were influenced by the French Impressionists’ interest in light and colour. Walter Sickert reviewed his 1914 one-man show in for May 7th of that year (15:01:17), calling him The New Age a painter of the highest natural ability, who has assiduously cultivated his gift for more than a quarter of a century, in the closest and most loving communion with nature.