Thomas Hennell

When John Rothenstein, Director of the Tate Gallery, published the third volume of his Modern English Painters in 1984, he subtitled it Hennell to Hockney. While—now as then—David Hockney needs no introduction, Thomas Hennell (1903-1945) has somehow slipped off the radar and undoubtedly deserves to be more widely recognised today.

In his lifetime, Hennell was highly regarded as an artist and author. His main theme was the English countryside, and his distinctive beautifully coloured watercolours and detailed drawings were made with a strong sense of vocation. He struggled with serious mental illness, was diagnosed as schizophrenic, and spent the years from 1932 to 1935 in the Maudsley mental hospital in London.

Edward Bawden encouraged him to 'centre and compose' the experience of schizophrenia by writing about it, and Hennell's remarkable illustrated account, The Witness, was published in 1938. Eric Ravilious, too, helped Hennell with his recovery, providing a series of wood engravings as illustrations for The Poems of Thomas Hennell, published in 1936.

At the outbreak of war in 1939, Hennell wrote to the War Artists' Advisory Committee, offering his services as an artist. From 1943, he was a full-time salaried war artist. He served in Europe and the Far East and was in Java when he was captured by Indonesian nationalist fighters in November 1945. He was presumed to have been killed shortly after.

At the time of his death, Hennell was widely considered to be one of Britain's most significant watercolourists and notable cultural figures. Kenneth Clark rated Hennell's work highly enough to place his work prominently in a display of National War Pictures at the National Gallery in 1945. Hennell's paintings and drawings provide an insight into an era: they will appeal to those with a love of the countryside and farming, an interest in the Second World War, and admirers of the now very famous artists who were his friends and regarded him as an equal.