Ernest Heber Thompson was born in Dunedin, New Zealand on 20 January 1891. He trained at the Dunedin School of Art and worked as a commercial artist and cartoonist. While serving as a sergeant with the New Zealand Expeditionary Force during the First World War, he was severely wounded and sent to England to recover. An army scholarship enabled him to study at the Slade School of Fine Art and at the Royal College of Art. Thompson settled permanently in England, working as a painter, printmaker and teacher. Ernest Heber Thompson died at Long Crendon, Buckinghamshire, England.on 13 April, 1971.
Painter, draughtsman, printmaker, cartoonist and teacher, Ernest Heber Thompson was born on 20 January 1891 in Dunedin, New Zealand. He received his early artistic training at the Dunedin School of Art under Alfred Henry O'Keeffe, a portrait and landscape painter who had trained at the Academie Julian in Paris and who exercised considerable influence on a generation of Dunedin artists; Thompson later also taught there himself. He worked as a commercial artist and cartoonist for the Otago Daily Times and for The Sketcher, a Dunedin magazine. He enlisted in the New Zealand Army and served as a sergeant with the 3rd New Zealand Rifle Brigade in France during the First World War, producing cartoons published in the army magazine, Chronicles of NZEF. On 7 June 1917, he was severely wounded at the Battle of Messines and was sent to England to recover. During his convalescence he made caricatures and sketches of the medical staff who treated him; these were published as Light Diet: 150 Caricatures and Sketches Perpetrated by a New Zealand Artist in and out of Hospital (1918). An army scholarship in 1919 then enabled Thompson to study at the Slade School of Fine Art in London and subsequently at the Royal College of Art, where he studied etching and was awarded the Sir Frank Short Prize. Thompson was a finalist in engraving for the Prix de Rome in 1923, and settled permanently in England, residing initially in south Hampstead, London.
Thompson's practice centred on etching and watercolour painting, with a particular focus on portraiture, the human figure and landscape. His style was strongly shaped by the technical rigour of his training under Frank Short, and his work exhibits a commitment to careful observation and accomplished draughtsmanship. He produced and exhibited etchings of gypsies throughout his career, combining his interest in character study with extensive travels across Europe; works such as Corsican Gypsy (1947) are characteristic of his approach, closely observed and rooted in the tradition of figurative etching. A 1979 review characterised Thompson as the most typical exponent of landscape among his group in the medium of watercolour, noting the plain grey washes and prominently rendered plants in his vegetable garden studies (Scilla Weber, 1979).
Thompson exhibited widely in Britain and abroad, showing regularly at the Royal Academy of Arts, the New English Art Club, the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers, the Royal Society of Portrait Painters and the Royal Scottish Academy. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers in 1939. Works shown at the Royal Academy included the chalk study, Interlude (1934) and the watercolour, Cirque sous les Arbres (1938), the latter depicting trapeze artists at Continental holiday shows. During the Second World War he served as an air raid warden during the Blitz; in October 1941, the War Artists' Advisory Committee commissioned him to produce three portraits of police and civil defence workers who had received bravery awards, at ten guineas each, and he gifted a fourth portrait to the Committee. He joined the faculty of the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London in 1941, remaining there until 1966, and also taught part-time at art schools, including those at Harrow, Highgate, Hornsey and Willesden. He served from 1951 to 1966 as the London representative of the National Art Gallery of New Zealand, recommending works for the national collection..
Ernest Heber Thompson died at Long Crendon, Buckinghamshire, England on 13 April 1971. A retrospective exhibition of his work was held at the Dunedin Art Gallery in 1970, and a posthumous group exhibition of his watercolours was held at the Parkin Gallery, London, in 1979. His works are held in public collections in the UK, including the British Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, Imperial War Museum, National Portrait Gallery, UAL: CSM Museum & Study Collection, and The Mercer Art Gallery, Harrogate. The Ben Uri Research Unit welcomes contributions from researchers or family members who might have further biographical information.
Michal Mel