Henry Carr (artist)
Henry Marvell Carr (16 August 1894 – 16 March 1970) was a British painter known for landscapes, portraits and war art. He was born in Leeds and studied at Leeds College of Art and the Royal College of Art, under William Rothenstein. He served in World War I with the Royal Field Artillery in France. After the war his paintings were shown at the Royal Academy in 1921 and in other galleries, including Paris. He painted portraits of notable people and landscapes of the English south coast.
When World War II began, Carr was asked by the War Artists' Advisory Committee to paint bomb damage in London, including St Pancras Station and St Clement Danes Church, and suburbs. An exhibition of his war paintings was held at the National Gallery in July 1940. His home and studio were destroyed in the Blitz. He painted The Merchant Navy: The Chain Locker and Merchant Seaman Fireman after traveling on a British merchant ship.
In 1943 he became a full-time War Office Artist. He travelled to North Africa and then Italy, painting soldiers, battles and landscapes in Algiers, Tunis, Cassino and Sessa. He witnessed Mount Vesuvius erupting in 1944, but left Italy later that year because of illness.
After the war he returned to portrait painting. In 1948 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, and in 1956 he won the Gold Medal at the Paris Salon. In 1952 he published Portrait Painting. Between 1957 and 1959 he created fourteen murals showing textile production for Salts Mill. He taught at Beckenham Art School for about 17 years and was head of the school. He joined the Royal Society of British Artists.
Carr was elected Associate Member of the Royal Academy in 1957 and full member in 1966, exhibiting there until his death. About seventy of his works are held by the Imperial War Museum.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 06:21 (CET).