Henri Tebbitt by Silas Clifford-Smith
The purchase of a large watercolour by French-born Henri Tebbitt prompted me to learn more about its maker. Finding that very little was known about him I was glad to discover an unpublished memoir by Tebbitt in the Mitchell Library, Sydney, which raised more questions than it answered.
Henri Tebbitt was one of the most successful landscape artists working in Australia during the early years of the 20th century. The son of English parents, Henri was born a British 'National' in Paris in 1852; the local authorities insisted on the French spelling of his first name. His father was a pin and needle merchant who had lived in the French capital since the time of the Second Republic in 1848. Despite his English heritage, Tebbitt lived almost exclusively in Paris during his youth and French was his first language.
For his final two years of schooling, Tebbitt was sent to the prestigious Queen Elizabeth School at Cranbrook in Kent, England, where he perfected his English language skills and excelled in music and art. At the time, the village of Cranbrook was the home of a notable school of painting and the young Tebbitt, through a schoolboy friendship with soon-to-be artist Walter Horsley, visited the studios of Thomas Webster and John Callcott Horsley. This was his first encounter with the world of art.
After completing his education, Tebbitt returned to Paris where he joined his father’s business. His debut in the commercial world was short lived, however, when France declared war on Prussia on 19 July 1870. After a brief military campaign, Paris was encircled by the enemy. In his memoirs, Tebbitt writes of this dramatic period in which he witnessed the deprivations associated with the siege, the humiliating French capitulation of February 1871, and the subsequent insurrection of the Communards. Tebbitt admits to joining the National Guard briefly before the French defeat, and later witnessed the violent suppression of the Commune in May 1871.
“What awful human tragedies occurred during those eleven weeks are beyond my powers to describe, but I witnessed some pitiful sights, witnessed the Pétrelouse at work and saw Paris in flames, a few summary executions and under very carefully selected shelter, a good many barricade fights.”
Lacking any interest in his father’s business, Tebbitt, after the war, informally trained as an artist in Paris and later in London. While in London he became associated with the Artists’ Society & Langham Sketching Club, and sometimes went sketching with members along the upper reaches of the Thames. Views of the River Thames remained common subjects in his work in subsequent decades.
During this period, he exhibited individual works at the annual shows of the Royal Society of British Artists (1882) and the Royal Academy of Arts (1884). Tebbitt’s skill at playing the piano, as well as his artistic connections, helped him gain entry to the homes and studios of several of the leading fashionable artists in England, including Lord Leighton, Sir John Millais, Sir Edward Poynter, George Vicat Cole and Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema.
Although, revealingly, not mentioned in his memoir, in 1878 Tebbitt married Martha Bateman in Scarborough, Yorkshire, and the following year their daughter, Marguerite was born in Paris. Soon back in London, the young family moved to his parents’ house in south London, which they had established during the Franco-Prussian war. Tebbitt, however, soon relocated to Belgium, and subsequently toured Germany, Holland, Austria, Italy, Switzerland and France.
Seemingly travelling the continent on his own, Tebbitt supported his travels by selling watercolour sketches and gambling. Following a big win at the Monte Carlo casino he moved to North America for several years where he teamed with the journalist Charles F. Denslow to produce illustrated character sketches.
We know very little of Tebbitt’s time in the United States and Canada, although in his memoir he admits to an interest in seeing the life of the underworld. After returning to London, Tebbitt was living in Chelsea with his wife and child. Finding little success, he resolved to travel to Australia.
According to Tebbitt, he first arrived in Australia in 1889. While this may indeed be true there is evidence to suggest that he first arrived in November 1891. Whether arriving in 1889 or 1891, Tebbitt first disembarked in Sydney, without his wife and child, and soon moved to Melbourne where he had relatives. From there he travelled through country Victoria visiting Ballarat, Maryborough and Castlemaine.
Moving on to Adelaide, he met up with an (unnamed) English amateur naturalist and the pair spent their first antipodean summer camping on the banks of the Onkaparinga Creek near Balhannah in the Adelaide Hills. While there Tebbitt sold his images to local landowners. He later toured Tasmania on foot, then moved to Queensland via Sydney.
Tebbitt admitted late in life that he had trouble adapting to the vegetation and light of Australia. This may account for his preference for painting coastal and river scenes as well as images of northern Europe for homesick migrants.
By 1894 he had settled in Brisbane where he made a living as an art and music teacher. One of his painting students was Edward Colclough, who later became a trustee of the Queensland Art Gallery. While in Brisbane, Tebbitt exhibited his work with the Queensland Art Society (QAS). His English-themed watercolour, Twilight (1895), received much praise in the local press and was subsequently purchased by the Queensland Art Gallery. A charming 1896 photograph of Tebbitt and several other QAS artists on a sketching excursion in Ipswich is the earliest known image of the artist.
By the late 1890s Tebbitt had returned to Sydney. His 1898 watercolour of Sydney Harbour in the Mitchell Library, Sydney, shows the artist’s continued interest in marine subjects. By 1900 he was listed living in the working-class harbourside peninsula of Balmain.
Around the turn of the century Tebbitt went into partnership with William Aldenhoven, an art dealer of Dutch and German parentage who ran a large commercial gallery in Sydney which specialised in artistic images that appealed to popular taste. Aldenhoven described Tebbitt in 1900 as ‘the poet painter of English scenery’. From 1900-13 Aldenhoven heavily promoted Tebbitt’s work which was sold through his gallery at 74 Hunter Street and at exhibitions and auctions in several state capitals. Tebbitt was a prolific artist during this period and his relationship with Aldenhoven led to great financial success.
Typical watercolour images painted during these years include crepuscular views of rivers, and lofty gum trees set in mountain scenery. Other common subjects included views of Sydney Harbour and scenes from Northern Europe. Even with the distance of time and changing taste, Tebbitt’s confident use of washes and fine drawing attest to his skill as a watercolourist.
Many of his works were painted on large-sized sheets of watercolour paper, making his images more striking than those of other watercolourists. Despite the uncommonly large sizes of his images, these works were in the realist artistic tradition associated with British and French art of the 1870s and 1880s.
In 1901 Tebbitt became a member of the (Royal) Art Society of NSW (RAS) and contributed many works to several of their annual exhibitions, but after a few years his work was rejected by the RAS exhibition selection committee. In his memoirs Tebbitt posits that these rejections may have been caused by his high-profile association with Aldenhoven, a relationship which led to his being the target of resentment from other artists jealous of his close association with the successful dealer:
“Whether this was owing to my connection with Mr Aldenhoven, or due to my drawings not being acceptable to the Selection Committee, I do not know, neither do I care, but if my drawings were not worthy of being exhibited, I consider that the Selection Committee performed its duties rightly.”
Tebbitt regularly toured the eastern states during his time in Australia and painted many regional areas. During the early years of the 20th century, he established a studio in the bush at Allgomera Creek in the Eungai district on the mid-north coast of NSW near South West Rocks, and this remote, heavily forested area provided inspiration for many of his late-period works.
At Allgomera, Tebbitt befriended a local farmer named Tom McGuigan and in 1903 he married his 26 year old daughter, Bertha. Despite his love for the district, Tebbitt continued to be based in Sydney, and during their marriage the couple moved several times, mainly within Sydney’s eastern suburbs. Revealingly, the 1903 wedding certificate makes no mention of the ending of Tebbitt’s first marriage, and as his first wife was still alive and using the Tebbitt name in England the omission suggests that Henri was a bigamist, an offence that may explain why he avoided discussing his personal life in his memoir.
Tebbitt’s career, arguably, reached a high point in 1910 when a five-page illustrated profile of his work, written by Aldenhoven, was published in the prestigious British art magazine, The Studio. Accompanying the text was a portrait of the artist by the Sydney photographer Apperley. At the same photographic session a double portrait of Aldenhoven and Tebbitt was also taken. That same year Tebbitt held several exhibitions around the country including a high profile show of his watercolours at the NSW Tourist Bureau in Martin Place, Sydney, where he was described in press promotions as ‘Australia’s Favourite Artist’.
Despite his long career in the arts, Tebbitt seems to have made few lasting friendships in the profession and preferred the company of non-artists. Nevertheless, he knew and had a high regard for landscape artists, William Lister Lister, J.A. Bennett and Frank Mahony. He had several friends in the local French community including the watercolour artist Jules De Leener and the pair had a joint exhibition in Brisbane in 1914. He was an admirer of the mid-19th century English-born artist Conrad Martens who, like Tebbitt, travelled around Australia and the world in pursuit of landscape images.
Tebbitt had a non-intellectual approach to art and he expressed these opinions in his late-life memoir:
“I am, personally, a man in the street. I lay no claim to Romance, Idealism, Impressionism, or much knowledge of any kind. I have simply endeavoured, perhaps with vision obscured, to reproduce as faithfully as I could, nature as I see it, and if my efforts are indifferent, no one regrets it more than I do.”
By 1913 Tebbitt and Aldenhoven had parted company, for reasons unknown. Tebbitt continued to paint during his final years and exhibited his work at exhibitions and auction sales but received little press attention. Publisher George Robertson (of Angus & Robertson) urged Tebbitt to write his life story, a 22,000 word memoir which was never published and remains in the collection of the Mitchell Library in Sydney. The manuscript was clearly written for an Australian audience but reveals little about his private life and his relationships with other artists.
Although his death is often erroneously listed as being in 1926, Tebbitt actually died on 3 January 1927, aged 74, at his Rose Bay, Sydney home. He was survived by his wife and his daughter from his first marriage. His mourners at Rookwood Necropolis included, among others, the tile and pressed-metal manufacturers Ernest and Alfred Wunderlich and the artists Neville Cayley, Herbert Badham and Jules de Leening,
In his memoirs, Tebbitt had discussed his approaching demise and how he wanted to be remembered on his tombstone:
“Here lie the remains of an Artist
Who, by some pals may be missed.
Of pictures, he painted many a score,
Generally 46 x 24.”
In his Brisbane Courier obituary, the art historian and reviewer William Moore critically assessed his work:
“Although he was not regarded as an artist of the first rank, Henri Tebbitt, who recently passed away, was widely known as a landscape painter in Australia. One got the impression when one viewed his works, that he might have become a painter of some distinction had he not been content to produce the kind of picture which was most in popular demand.”
Despite his nationwide popularity during the Edwardian-era, artistic taste had clearly changed with the advent of the post-war Australian art boom. Tebbitt’s art was soon forgotten. Taste, as we know, is fickle and while his style may now seem anachronistic, that is part of its lasting charm. Whether you like his work or not, Tebbitt’s technical skill as a watercolourist is undeniable and he remains a notable pioneer of the medium in Australia.
© Silas Clifford-Smith 2013
An edited form of this article (with references and more illustrations) was first published in the February 2011 issue of Australiana (the journal of the Australiana Society).
Henri Tebbitt was one of the most successful landscape artists working in Australia during the early years of the 20th century. The son of English parents, Henri was born a British 'National' in Paris in 1852; the local authorities insisted on the French spelling of his first name. His father was a pin and needle merchant who had lived in the French capital since the time of the Second Republic in 1848. Despite his English heritage, Tebbitt lived almost exclusively in Paris during his youth and French was his first language.
For his final two years of schooling, Tebbitt was sent to the prestigious Queen Elizabeth School at Cranbrook in Kent, England, where he perfected his English language skills and excelled in music and art. At the time, the village of Cranbrook was the home of a notable school of painting and the young Tebbitt, through a schoolboy friendship with soon-to-be artist Walter Horsley, visited the studios of Thomas Webster and John Callcott Horsley. This was his first encounter with the world of art.
After completing his education, Tebbitt returned to Paris where he joined his father’s business. His debut in the commercial world was short lived, however, when France declared war on Prussia on 19 July 1870. After a brief military campaign, Paris was encircled by the enemy. In his memoirs, Tebbitt writes of this dramatic period in which he witnessed the deprivations associated with the siege, the humiliating French capitulation of February 1871, and the subsequent insurrection of the Communards. Tebbitt admits to joining the National Guard briefly before the French defeat, and later witnessed the violent suppression of the Commune in May 1871.
“What awful human tragedies occurred during those eleven weeks are beyond my powers to describe, but I witnessed some pitiful sights, witnessed the Pétrelouse at work and saw Paris in flames, a few summary executions and under very carefully selected shelter, a good many barricade fights.”
Lacking any interest in his father’s business, Tebbitt, after the war, informally trained as an artist in Paris and later in London. While in London he became associated with the Artists’ Society & Langham Sketching Club, and sometimes went sketching with members along the upper reaches of the Thames. Views of the River Thames remained common subjects in his work in subsequent decades.
During this period, he exhibited individual works at the annual shows of the Royal Society of British Artists (1882) and the Royal Academy of Arts (1884). Tebbitt’s skill at playing the piano, as well as his artistic connections, helped him gain entry to the homes and studios of several of the leading fashionable artists in England, including Lord Leighton, Sir John Millais, Sir Edward Poynter, George Vicat Cole and Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema.
Although, revealingly, not mentioned in his memoir, in 1878 Tebbitt married Martha Bateman in Scarborough, Yorkshire, and the following year their daughter, Marguerite was born in Paris. Soon back in London, the young family moved to his parents’ house in south London, which they had established during the Franco-Prussian war. Tebbitt, however, soon relocated to Belgium, and subsequently toured Germany, Holland, Austria, Italy, Switzerland and France.
Seemingly travelling the continent on his own, Tebbitt supported his travels by selling watercolour sketches and gambling. Following a big win at the Monte Carlo casino he moved to North America for several years where he teamed with the journalist Charles F. Denslow to produce illustrated character sketches.
We know very little of Tebbitt’s time in the United States and Canada, although in his memoir he admits to an interest in seeing the life of the underworld. After returning to London, Tebbitt was living in Chelsea with his wife and child. Finding little success, he resolved to travel to Australia.
According to Tebbitt, he first arrived in Australia in 1889. While this may indeed be true there is evidence to suggest that he first arrived in November 1891. Whether arriving in 1889 or 1891, Tebbitt first disembarked in Sydney, without his wife and child, and soon moved to Melbourne where he had relatives. From there he travelled through country Victoria visiting Ballarat, Maryborough and Castlemaine.
Moving on to Adelaide, he met up with an (unnamed) English amateur naturalist and the pair spent their first antipodean summer camping on the banks of the Onkaparinga Creek near Balhannah in the Adelaide Hills. While there Tebbitt sold his images to local landowners. He later toured Tasmania on foot, then moved to Queensland via Sydney.
Tebbitt admitted late in life that he had trouble adapting to the vegetation and light of Australia. This may account for his preference for painting coastal and river scenes as well as images of northern Europe for homesick migrants.
By 1894 he had settled in Brisbane where he made a living as an art and music teacher. One of his painting students was Edward Colclough, who later became a trustee of the Queensland Art Gallery. While in Brisbane, Tebbitt exhibited his work with the Queensland Art Society (QAS). His English-themed watercolour, Twilight (1895), received much praise in the local press and was subsequently purchased by the Queensland Art Gallery. A charming 1896 photograph of Tebbitt and several other QAS artists on a sketching excursion in Ipswich is the earliest known image of the artist.
By the late 1890s Tebbitt had returned to Sydney. His 1898 watercolour of Sydney Harbour in the Mitchell Library, Sydney, shows the artist’s continued interest in marine subjects. By 1900 he was listed living in the working-class harbourside peninsula of Balmain.
Around the turn of the century Tebbitt went into partnership with William Aldenhoven, an art dealer of Dutch and German parentage who ran a large commercial gallery in Sydney which specialised in artistic images that appealed to popular taste. Aldenhoven described Tebbitt in 1900 as ‘the poet painter of English scenery’. From 1900-13 Aldenhoven heavily promoted Tebbitt’s work which was sold through his gallery at 74 Hunter Street and at exhibitions and auctions in several state capitals. Tebbitt was a prolific artist during this period and his relationship with Aldenhoven led to great financial success.
Typical watercolour images painted during these years include crepuscular views of rivers, and lofty gum trees set in mountain scenery. Other common subjects included views of Sydney Harbour and scenes from Northern Europe. Even with the distance of time and changing taste, Tebbitt’s confident use of washes and fine drawing attest to his skill as a watercolourist.
Many of his works were painted on large-sized sheets of watercolour paper, making his images more striking than those of other watercolourists. Despite the uncommonly large sizes of his images, these works were in the realist artistic tradition associated with British and French art of the 1870s and 1880s.
In 1901 Tebbitt became a member of the (Royal) Art Society of NSW (RAS) and contributed many works to several of their annual exhibitions, but after a few years his work was rejected by the RAS exhibition selection committee. In his memoirs Tebbitt posits that these rejections may have been caused by his high-profile association with Aldenhoven, a relationship which led to his being the target of resentment from other artists jealous of his close association with the successful dealer:
“Whether this was owing to my connection with Mr Aldenhoven, or due to my drawings not being acceptable to the Selection Committee, I do not know, neither do I care, but if my drawings were not worthy of being exhibited, I consider that the Selection Committee performed its duties rightly.”
Tebbitt regularly toured the eastern states during his time in Australia and painted many regional areas. During the early years of the 20th century, he established a studio in the bush at Allgomera Creek in the Eungai district on the mid-north coast of NSW near South West Rocks, and this remote, heavily forested area provided inspiration for many of his late-period works.
At Allgomera, Tebbitt befriended a local farmer named Tom McGuigan and in 1903 he married his 26 year old daughter, Bertha. Despite his love for the district, Tebbitt continued to be based in Sydney, and during their marriage the couple moved several times, mainly within Sydney’s eastern suburbs. Revealingly, the 1903 wedding certificate makes no mention of the ending of Tebbitt’s first marriage, and as his first wife was still alive and using the Tebbitt name in England the omission suggests that Henri was a bigamist, an offence that may explain why he avoided discussing his personal life in his memoir.
Tebbitt’s career, arguably, reached a high point in 1910 when a five-page illustrated profile of his work, written by Aldenhoven, was published in the prestigious British art magazine, The Studio. Accompanying the text was a portrait of the artist by the Sydney photographer Apperley. At the same photographic session a double portrait of Aldenhoven and Tebbitt was also taken. That same year Tebbitt held several exhibitions around the country including a high profile show of his watercolours at the NSW Tourist Bureau in Martin Place, Sydney, where he was described in press promotions as ‘Australia’s Favourite Artist’.
Despite his long career in the arts, Tebbitt seems to have made few lasting friendships in the profession and preferred the company of non-artists. Nevertheless, he knew and had a high regard for landscape artists, William Lister Lister, J.A. Bennett and Frank Mahony. He had several friends in the local French community including the watercolour artist Jules De Leener and the pair had a joint exhibition in Brisbane in 1914. He was an admirer of the mid-19th century English-born artist Conrad Martens who, like Tebbitt, travelled around Australia and the world in pursuit of landscape images.
Tebbitt had a non-intellectual approach to art and he expressed these opinions in his late-life memoir:
“I am, personally, a man in the street. I lay no claim to Romance, Idealism, Impressionism, or much knowledge of any kind. I have simply endeavoured, perhaps with vision obscured, to reproduce as faithfully as I could, nature as I see it, and if my efforts are indifferent, no one regrets it more than I do.”
By 1913 Tebbitt and Aldenhoven had parted company, for reasons unknown. Tebbitt continued to paint during his final years and exhibited his work at exhibitions and auction sales but received little press attention. Publisher George Robertson (of Angus & Robertson) urged Tebbitt to write his life story, a 22,000 word memoir which was never published and remains in the collection of the Mitchell Library in Sydney. The manuscript was clearly written for an Australian audience but reveals little about his private life and his relationships with other artists.
Although his death is often erroneously listed as being in 1926, Tebbitt actually died on 3 January 1927, aged 74, at his Rose Bay, Sydney home. He was survived by his wife and his daughter from his first marriage. His mourners at Rookwood Necropolis included, among others, the tile and pressed-metal manufacturers Ernest and Alfred Wunderlich and the artists Neville Cayley, Herbert Badham and Jules de Leening,
In his memoirs, Tebbitt had discussed his approaching demise and how he wanted to be remembered on his tombstone:
“Here lie the remains of an Artist
Who, by some pals may be missed.
Of pictures, he painted many a score,
Generally 46 x 24.”
In his Brisbane Courier obituary, the art historian and reviewer William Moore critically assessed his work:
“Although he was not regarded as an artist of the first rank, Henri Tebbitt, who recently passed away, was widely known as a landscape painter in Australia. One got the impression when one viewed his works, that he might have become a painter of some distinction had he not been content to produce the kind of picture which was most in popular demand.”
Despite his nationwide popularity during the Edwardian-era, artistic taste had clearly changed with the advent of the post-war Australian art boom. Tebbitt’s art was soon forgotten. Taste, as we know, is fickle and while his style may now seem anachronistic, that is part of its lasting charm. Whether you like his work or not, Tebbitt’s technical skill as a watercolourist is undeniable and he remains a notable pioneer of the medium in Australia.
© Silas Clifford-Smith 2013
An edited form of this article (with references and more illustrations) was first published in the February 2011 issue of Australiana (the journal of the Australiana Society).