Henry Bishop RA NEAC ROI (1868–1939) was a British painter known for his landscapes, coastal scenes, and the North African subjects that became central to his early career. He was elected to the New English Art Club in 1929.
Born in London in 1868, Henry Bishop studied at the Slade before continuing his development in Paris and Brittany, where he worked under the American painter Alexander Harrison. Even in these early years, Bishop showed the hallmarks of an artist drawn to atmosphere – the way light settles on water, the weight of heat in a street, the subtle shifts of colour at the edge of day.
By the late 1880s he was in Cornwall, becoming one of the founder members of the St Ives Arts Club. The coastal environment, with its shifting weather and working harbour, offered him a visual language he would return to throughout his life.
But Bishop was not an artist inclined to stay still. Travel became central to his practice, and it was his extended periods in Morocco that left some of the deepest marks on his work. His Moroccan street scenes and townscapes – alive with sun-bleached walls, deep shadows, and the rhythms of daily life – reveal a painter attentive to both structure and sensation. A solo exhibition at the Goupil Gallery in 1913 confirmed the significance of this period.
Bishop also worked in the South of France, where the Mediterranean light softened his palette and broadened his range. Later, back in England, he became known for his views of Dover, including Shakespeare’s Cliff, Dover, purchased for the Chantrey Bequest in 1933. Across these varied locations, his work retained a consistent sensibility: observational, painterly, and grounded in lived experience.
He first exhibited with the New English Art Club in 1897 and was elected a member in 1929. By then he was already a regular presence at the Royal Academy, where he showed more than sixty works from 1906 onwards. His election as an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1932, and as a full Academician in 1939, marked the steady recognition of a career built on craft rather than spectacle. He died later that same year, before receiving his diploma.
Today, Bishop’s work is held in several notable UK public collections, including the Tate, the National Portrait Gallery, the Royal Academy of Arts, and Manchester Art Gallery.
Header image: Shakespeare's Cliff, Dover, Henry A. Bishop (1868–1939), Image: Tate
View a selection of images of Henry Bishop's paintings on the ArtUK website.