Herbert Arnould Olivier

Herbert Arnould Olivier R.I., British artist, was born 9 September 1861 in Battle, East Sussex, England and died 2 March 1952 at Hayling Island, Hampshire, England. He was educated between 1875 and 1877 at Sherborne School, a public school in Dorset and in 1922 gave his painting 'Easter Morn' to the School. The painting was originally intended for a church in Italy but it was put in such a bad light that he refused to leave it there. He was a London based portrait and landscape painter who studied at the Royal Academy Schools beginning in 1881, where he won the Creswick Prize in 1882. He exhibited extensively, including the RA starting in 1883, the R. P., the R. I. and the Paris Salon. He taught at the Bombay School of Art in the 1880s. He went to Kashmir with the Duke and Duchess of Connaught in 1884. In 1885 he showed 66 of the paintings from his trip to Kashmir at the Fine Art Society. These works were considered "effective, though hard and coarse in colour" by critics. He had a one man exhibition at the Grafton Galleries in 1908 and was appointed an Official War Artist in 1917. He was elected to the Royal Society of British Artists in 1887 and to the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolors in 1929 where a major retrospective exhibition of his work was held in 1935. He was an uncle of Sir Laurence Olivier, the actor. and of Noël Olivier. In 1924, Olivier presented to the nation, for display in 'the new War Museum at South Kensington', a number of painting he had produced as Official War Artist, these included 'The Supreme War Council' (the original of which was given to the French Government and displayed in the Palace of Versailles), 'The Armistice Meeting', 'The Military Representatives in Conference', 'The Peace Signature Table', and various portraits. The paintings now form part of the collections of the Imperial War Museum. In 1960, Olivier was commissioned to paint twenty native chiefs for display at the College of Indore in India.

He is mentioned in Mallalieu's British Watercolor Artists and Davenport's Art Reference. He may have been the H. A. Olivier whose work was reproduced in 20 color plates for The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew: Historical and Descriptive, Cassell & Co. Ltd, London, 1908. His work and biography are published in The Modern British Paintings, Drawings, and Sculpture, Chamont, London 1964. In later life his work tended towards large ceremonial works using oils.