Henry Ospovat was born to orthodox Jewish parents in Dvinsk, Russia (now Daugavpils, Latvia) in 1877. Possibly fearing persecution and in the hope of finding greater economic security, the family moved to Manchester, England around 1891. After studying at the South Kensington Schools (Royal College of Art) in London, Ospovat illustrated both classics and popular novels and was beginning to develop as a portraitist and caricaturist when he died untimely in 1909, aged only 31.
Illustrator Henry Ospovat was born to orthodox Jewish parents in 1877 in Dvinsk, Russia (now Daugavpils, Latvia), a prominent Jewish cultural centre in the former Russian Empire. Possibly fearing persecution and in the hope of finding greater economic security, the family moved to England around 1891, settling within the large Jewish community already established in Manchester. Ospovat attended the Jews' School in Derby Street and, almost certainly, a private Hebrew school. Recognising his artistic talent from a young age, his teachers helped to send him to the Municipal School of Art around 1893, with a wealthy member of the local Jewish community paying for his tuition. At the school, he was encouraged by Walter Crane, the visiting Master of Design. Afterwards, Ospovat was apprenticed to a local lithographer and in 1897 he relocated to London where, thanks to a scholarship, he studied at the South Kensington Schools (Royal College of Art). He trained in lithography under Thomas Robert Way and his progress continued to be encouraged by Crane, who had become the college’s Principal. During this time, Ospovat also met pre-Raphaelite, George Frederick Watts and the novelist Arnold Bennett. Other influential artists included Daniel Gabriel Rossetti, Frederick Sandys and Boyd Houghton, whose works he carefully observed, as suggested by his early designs for book-plates. At the end of 1898, Ospovat was introduced to the publisher John Lane who recognised his artistic talent and immediately commissioned a set of illustrations to the Sonnets of Shakespeare (1899), which revealed Ospovat's 'awareness of Laurence Housman and Charles Ricketts as well as of the artists of the 1860s' (Beetles 2012, p. 7). Lane next commissioned Ospovat to work on Poems of Matthew Arnold (1900) and Shakespeare Songs (1901).
Ospovat's desire to publish his work in a large, portfolio format seemed to be fulfilled when he received a commission by J M Dent for an edition of Robert Browning's Men and Women. However, he was disappointed when he found that the published volume (1903) was much more conventional in appearance and excluded some of his more experimental drawings. In the same year Ospovat produced illustrations to Constance E Maud's Heroines of Poetry and, probably from financial necessity, he also undertook 'a series of direct and hatchet-like illustrations to a series of cheap novels' (Onions 1911, p. 23). Nevertheless, he remained ambitious, and planned portfolios for Stars of the Music Hall and Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. Ospovat also developed his talent for caricature, proving to be 'merciless in his humour' (The Observer 1909, p. 8). His caricatures, particularly in Sporting Sketches published in 1907, would influence prominent cartoonists such as H M Bateman and Bert Thomas. Among the personalities who became his subjects were Marie Lloyd, Henry Irving, Sir Thomas Lipton and George Grossmith Jr. Some caricatures featured in the Annual Caricature Exhibition at the Baillle Gallery in 1908, when they were praised in the Manchester Guardian; other works appeared in the same year at the New English Art Club and the International Society. Ospovat also produced watercolours and paintings (one representing a couple in Renaissance dress was reproduced in Country Life, 23 January 1992), and he was beginning to develop as a portraitist when he developed stomach cancer.
Henry Ospovat died in London, England on 1 February 1909, aged only 31. As reported by his friend Haldane Macfall, 'Ospovat always faced the truth [of his illness]; he shook his head, and, with a smile, said that it was not his bodily agonies that punished him, but the awful fact that he was not granted a little while longer to do good work' (Macfall 1912, p. 7). A memorial exhibition, 'displaying a cleverness approaching genius' (The Graphic 1909, p. 352), was held at the Baillie Gallery (established by New Zealand ex pat dealer, John Baillie) the following month, from which the British Museum bought four drawings for their collection. In 1912, Anglo-Jewish poet-painter, 'Whitechapel Boy', Isaac Rosenberg reviewed a further show at the Baillie, featuring works by Ospovat and fellow Jewish artist, J. H. Amshewitz, which was printed in the Jewish Chronicle. Rosenberg observed that 'If one were to walk into the Baillie Galleries, Bruton Street, without knowing the names of the artists [...] one would not suspect for a moment the Jewish parentage of this remarkable progeny' (Jewish Chronicle, 1912). The Athenaeum praised some of the exhibition’s book illustrations, among them the ‘delicate feminine figure, touching in its refinement’ in Two Young Fair Lovers (The Athenaeum 1909, p. 205). A limited-edition portfolio of Ospovat's illustrations, caricatures, sketches and portraits was published with an appreciation written by his friend, the novelist Oliver Onions in 1911 and which included reproductions many previously unpublished portraits and studies for portraits. after many years of reputational neglect, in 1992, Ospovat was included in the exhibition of works on paper Beardsley to Bomberg held at the Tate Gallery. His work is represented in UK public collections including the Tate, Victoria and Albert Museum, British Museum and Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester. Ospovat's brother-in-law was the sculptor and potter Reginald Fairfax-Wells.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Henry Ospovat]
Publications related to [Henry Ospovat] in the Ben Uri Library