Design and Art Australia Online

Henry Rayner, 1902-1957

Born in Hawthorn, near Melbourne, Victoria, on 19 September 1902, Henry Rayner was an only child. He grew up in the nearby coastal town of Brighton, and developed an early interest in drawing, painting and writing. In his late teens, while living & working at various times as a jeweller, farmworker and motor mechanic in New Zealand, he discovered the work of the Impressionists. This inspired him to go to Britain for formal art training. Before his 1923 departure he took lessons in Melbourne with noted black-and-white artist and illustrator Charles Nuttall.

Apart from a very brief return visit to Australia in 1931 to see his mother, he lived in England for the rest of his life. In 1925 he won a place at London’s Royal Academy Schools. One of the visiting teachers was Walter Richard Sickert. Rayner never completed the five-year course, and in 1926, with Sickert’s encouragement, set out to earn his living as an artist. Against Sickert’s advice, he chose drypoint printmaking as his principal medium. Sickert continued to tutor him, and the two became friends, meeting regularly until 1934, occasionally working together.

Rayner struggled to make ends meet through the hungry years of the 1930s, yet continued making his Impressionist-inspired drypoints. His subjects included topographical scenes (especially in Chelsea and other Thames riverside locations), portraits, animals, circus, theatre and ballet, and to a lesser degree works with social, political, religious and surrealist themes. Typical print runs were 12-15 proofs.

Like Sickert, he saw artistic possibilities in everyday people and places, rather than the rich and famous. He was also a passionate believer in affordable art for ordinary people, and his commitment to printmaking was in part driven by this belief.

Ironically perhaps, he came to public attention in 1939 with a portrait of someone out of the ordinary, when his drypoint of King George VI attracted the interest of Queen Mary (the then King’s mother), and she acquired a proof. Rayner described this work, showing the King in informal clothes, as his 'democratic portrait of the King’. After that he did a number of drypoints of public figures from the worlds of politics, art, literature and the stage.

Rayner had married in 1926, and had two children, both girls. He stayed in central London through the 1939-45 war, rejected for military service on medical grounds, and was separated from his family for long periods when they were evacuated away from London because of the bombing.

He was a lifelong asthma sufferer, and the blast from a bomb that fell near his home/studio in 1940 caused permanent lung damage. He smashed the elbow of his drawing arm in a fall in 1941, and was injured by bomb blast again during volunteer work with stretcher parties. He carried on sketching and etching London blitz scenes.

In 1945 he was given a one-man exhibition at London’s prestigious Brook Street Art Gallery. In January 1953 there was an exhibition of his work at the Australian Embassy, London. A major exhibition of his work was held posthumously in 1960 at the Richmond Hill Gallery.

The family lived mostly in the Gospel Oak area of north London, near Hampstead Heath, until 1955 when they moved to Ramsgate on the Kent coast. In 1957, depressed and in poor health, Rayner took his own life. He is buried, alongside his wife and both daughters (who all passed away in the 1990s), in London’s Highgate Cemetery. His tombstone carries the wording 'Made the famous drypoints during the blitz of 1940’ and 'protege of W R Sickert.’

Rayner produced more than 500 original drypoint plates between 1926 and 1945. He continued with his single-minded concentration on drypoint etching even though by the 1930s the 'etching revival’ had ended, and black-and-white prints were out of fashion.

Several British art collections have examples of his prints, including the British Museum, the Victoria & Albert Museum, and the Royal Collection at Windsor. The 2008 'Australian Surrealism’ exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra included four Rayner drypoints from the mid 1930s – part of the Agapitos Wilson collection. The New Zealand National Collection of War Art includes three of his drypoints of wartime London scenes.

Rayner decided to adopt his middle name for professional purposes, so all his prints, drawings and paintings were signed 'Henry Rayner’ from 1926 on; he had actually been christened Hewitt Henry Rayner. To family and friends he continued to be known as Hewitt, or Hewie until the end of his life.

Writers:

Staton, Roger Note:

Date written:

2009

Last updated:

2011

Status:

peer-reviewed