Herbert Arnould Olivier
Herbert Arnould Olivier R.I. (9 September 1861 – 2 March 1952), was a British artist.
Life
Born in Battle, East Sussex, England, Olivier 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.[1] 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 Royal Academy 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. He was elected to the Royal Society of British Artists in 1887 and to the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours in 1929 where a major retrospective exhibition of his work was held in 1935. In 1917, Olivier was appointed an Official War Artist and in 1924 he presented to the nation, for display in 'the new War Museum at South Kensington', a number of painting, including '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.
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 colour 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.
He died in Hayling Island, Hampshire, and was an uncle of the actor Sir Laurence Olivier [2] and Noël Olivier.
References
External links
- Herbert Arnould Olivier paintings (slideshow from BBC Your Paintings)