Artist     Henry Lamb
Title      Football Fan
Date      1950's
object    Painting
Media    oil
Size       66 x 51cm
Ref          44

Purchased in the 98th RWA Annual Exhibition in 1950

Other websites featuring this artist's work
www.npg.org.uk/
www.tate.org.uk/

Football Fan
Henry Lamb, the son of the mathematician, Horace Lamb, was born in Manchester in 1883. After attending Manchester Grammar School he starting medical training at Owen's College (later to become Manchester University). In 1905 he left his medical studies and went to London where he entered the Chelsea School of Art. Over the next few years several of his paintings received good reviews, including Death of a Peasant and Fisherfolk.

He also became close friends with Augustus John and Lytton Strachey. For a time, Lamb and John lived together with Dorelia McNeill at Alderney Manor near Poole. In 1913 Lamb met Stanley Spencer and was immediately impressed by his visionary paintings.

On the outbreak of the First World War, Lamb thought it was his patriotic duty to return to medicine. After a spell at Guy's Hospital, Lamb and Stanley Spencer joined the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC). Lamb was sent to France where he worked at the Hospital du Casino. In November 1915 he returned to England where he finished off his medical studies in order to qualify for a commission in the RAMC. In September, 1916, Lamb was sent as a member of the Northumbrian Field Ambulance Unit to Salonika.

In March 1917 Lamb was promoted to captain and transferred to the Fifth Battalion of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers. By the time Lamb arrived this part of the front-line was extremely quiet and for the next seven months he spent most his time building roads and defences.

The Fifth Battalion of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers were sent in September 1917 to join General Edmund Allenby and his campaign to drive the Turks out of Palestine. On 3rd May, 1918, Lamb witnessed a bombardment of the Fifth Inniskilling Fusiliers at the village of Jiljila in Palestine. The incident killed four soldiers and injured eight more. When later in the same year he was asked to paint a large commemorative painting for the national record of war, the Hall of Remembrance, Lamb chose the Jiljila incident.

Lamb's painting, Irish Troops in the Judaen Hills was finished in 1919. Many critics have pointed out the similarities between this painting and Stanley Spencer's Travoys Arriving with Wounded at a Dressing Station that had also been commissioned for the Hall of Remembrance.

After the First World War Lamb became a much sought-after portrait painter. In the Second World War Henry Lamb became an official war artist and tended to concentrate on portraits of soldiers and airmen stationed in England.

Henry Lamb died in 1960.

Further Reading:
www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/ARTlamb.htm

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