Harry Faulkner Van der Weyden was born in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, on 8 September 1868, to a Dutch-born artist/photographer father and English mother. The family immigrated to London, England around 1870, and he trained at the Slade School of Fine Art, before continuing at the Académie Julian in Paris. After two decades largely based in France, he returned to England in 1914, where he continued his career as a respected painter, showing regularly in London galleries and at the Royal Academy. Harry Faulkner Van der Weyden died in London, England on 23 September 1952.
Painter Harry Faulkner Van der Weyden was born in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, on 8 September 1868, the only child of Henry Van der Weyde, a Dutch-born painter and photographer, and the English-born Mona Wetherbee (R. Van der Weyden, 1999, pp. 68-69). The family immigrated to London around 1870, and he won a scholarship to the Slade School of Fine Art in 1887, studying under Alphonse Legros, before moving to Paris in 1890 to train at the Académie Julian under Benjamin Constant, Jean-Paul Laurens and Jules-Joseph Lefebvre. It was during this period that he added an 'n' to his surname to distinguish his work from his father's (Ibid. p. 69). He made his Salon debut in 1891 with Soir d'Été (American Register, 2 May 1891), and in 1893, only three years after leaving the Paris studios, won a third-class medal there. That June, a solo exhibition in Boston, billed as the Van der Weyden Exhibition, proved a sensation, with every canvas sold within three weeks (Dover Express, 16 June 1893). During the same visit, he married Florence Victoria Moore.
Van der Weyden continued to exhibit at the Salon, showing a portrait and two moonlit and marine subjects in 1898 (American Register, 14 May 1898), the same year he first showed at the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition. His reputation grew through the 1890s, at the Art Institute of Chicago and the 1897 Munich International Art Exhibition. In 1899, he again showed works on the line at the Summer Exhibition (American Register, 1 July 1899), and a watercolour of a girl watching pigeons feed, En Été, at the Grafton Galleries (Morning Post, 3 November 1899). In 1900 he showed at the Paris Exposition Universelle. He then settled with his family at Montreuil-sur-Mer, Pas-de-Calais, associating with Max Bohm and Irving Couse and painting Channel-coast fishing life in an Impressionist, tonalist manner. He held a solo show at the Galerie des Artistes Modernes, Paris, in 1904, and returned repeatedly to the Royal Institute of Oil Painters with landscapes of Montreuil, including In the Shadow of the Ramparts (1905; Black & White, 28 October 1905) and In My Garden (1906; Pall Mall Gazette, 17 October 1906); in 1905 he won a third medal at the Liège exposition (American Register, 10 September 1905).
With war approaching, Van der Weyden left France for England in 1914 with his wife and children. During the conflict Van der Weyden served as a camouflage officer with the Royal Engineers (Morning Post, 1 December 1917). He showed at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition again in 1916, and his war paintings were noted in 1919 among the 'camouflage school' of artists, one critic finding them 'not less relentless in their candour as to the horrors of war' than those of his peers (The Scotsman, 7 October 1919). He continued to show at the Summer Exhibition through the 1920s: Studio Interior (1920; Truth, 12 May 1920), the moonlit The Old Pier (1924; Leeds Mercury, 3 May 1924), and, in 1926, both Calm (West Sussex Gazette, 27 May 1926) and the nocturne City of Dreams (Leeds Mercury, 1 May 1926); that year he also showed with the East Sussex Arts Club, Hastings (Hastings and St Leonards Observer, 16 October 1926). By 1927, The Studio magazine devoted an illustrated article to his paintings, praising his ' excellent realism in landscape'(The Times, 16 July 1927; Aberdeen Press and Journal, 19 July 1927); he showed again in 1928.
After the war, Van der Weyden moved his studio to London, settling in West Hampstead, but kept travelling and painting on the Continent, showing All Saints, St Agnes, Alpes Maritimes, a Côte d'Azur scene near Menton, at the Royal West of England Academy in 1933 (Western Daily Press, 3 November 1933).
Van der Weyden died in London, England on 23 September 1952. His paintings are held in UK public collections, including the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum; Victoria and Albert Museum. The Ben Uri Research Unit welcomes contributions from researchers or family members who may have further biographical information.
Michal Mel