Thomas Humphrey (1858 – 1922) was a Scottish-born Australian artist and photographer who was associated with the Heidelberg School art movement, also known as Australian impressionism.
Although a minor figure in the history of Australian art compared to Tom Roberts, Arthur Streeton and other members of the Heidelberg School, Humphrey won praise for his work from his contemporaries, and today he is represented in the permanent collections of several of Australia's major art galleries.
Career
Born in 1858 in Aberdeen, Scotland, Humphrey migrated as a young boy with his family to Australia, settling in the Melbourne suburb of Richmond. As a teenager, he studied part-time at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School and entered the photographic trade, where he worked with George Pitt Morison and eventually established his own photographic studio with his wife, Alice Mills.
Throughout much of his life, Humphrey was plagued by health problems which, together with the demands of running a photographic studio, limited his ability to paint. He died at his residence in Armadale in 1922. His first one-man show was held posthumously in 1925 at the Fine Art Society's Gallery on Exhibition Street, Melbourne. In a foreword to the exhibition's catalogue, Roberts wrote that Humphrey expressed in his works "the intimate and tender spirit of the Bush in its quiet moods", and that, despite his health problems, he "looked forward to a time of leisure for uninterrupted converse with nature."[3]
Selected paintings
The Way to School, 1887, Warrnambool Art Gallery
Under a Summer Sun, 1895, National Gallery of Victoria
References
^McCulloch, Alan (1969). The golden age of Australian painting: impressionism and the Heidelberg school. Lansdowne. p. 50.