Victorian Art in Britain

 Henry Tanworth Wells was born in 1828. He was a pupil of J M Leigh. Initially the young Wells specialised in painting miniatures, but the development of photography rapidly made this formerly profitable area of artistic endeavour obsolete, and he was obliged to become a painter in oils. He rapidly became successful, and became ARA in 1866, and a full Academician in 1870. Wells married the much more artistically talented painter and writer Joanna Boyce, who tragically died, at the age of twenty-nine, following the birth of their third child in three years. No sensible person can regard modern contraceptive techniques as anything other than an enormous benefit to the human race, particularly the female half of it! Wells did not re-marry. Their son, Sidney, of whom Joanna painted a beautiful portrait as a baby also died in childhood.

Wells was a successful portrait painter, and became prosperous. His talents as a manager and administrator made him a leading figure in the Royal Academy of whose, established practices, and some would say vested interests, he was a vigorous defender. Wells acted as Leighton’s deputy, during the latter’s illness in 1895.

I regard Joanna Boyce as one of the great artistic talents of the second half of the nineteenth century, and I am far more interested in her than her much less talented husband. Her early death, and the subsequent destruction of part of her oeuvre in the Second World War is one of the greatest losses to English art. Had she lived she would have become one of the great English artists.  

OBITUARY - The Times Monday January 3^rd 1903

We regret to learn that the death of Mr Henry Tanworth Wells, for over 30 years a Royal Academician, occurred on Friday after a short illness. The son of the late Henry Tanworth Wells, he was born in London on 1828, and was trained as an artist from early youth, beginning to exhibit at the Royal Academy at the age of 18. In 1857 he married Joanna  Mary Boyce, sister of the late George Price Boyce (1826-1897 friend of and a member of the circle of Rossetti, admirer and possibly lover of Fanny Cornforth), the distinguished watercolour painter and herself (as the world was reminded at a recent exhibition) a painter of a very delicate and charming kind, allied to the Pre-Raphaelites.

 In 1861 Henry Wells exhibited his first portrait in oils, and from that time forward few exhibitions of the Royal Academy were without his accurate, competent, but somewhat uninspired pictures. His workmanship was good, and his reputation grew so quickly that in 1866 he was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy, promotion to full honours arriving in 1870. In those days he was chiefly known as the painter of groups of volunteers; in 1880 came his best known picture “The Princess Victoria receiving the news of her Accession” and of late he contented himself almost exclusively with portraits, many eminent men, and well-known women, and well-known ladies having sat to him. Mr Wells, however, was not only a painter. He was an excellent man of business, and he wrote well; and whether in the Council of the Royal Academy or outside he was a thick and thin supporter of the rights and privileges of that body. In the celebrated controversy which raged in our columns some years ago, when Mr Holman Hunt led an agitation for reform, Mr Wells was the chief and most vehement defender of the existing state of things, and from this position he never retreated. His colleagues showed their appreciation by appointing him to act as deputy during Lord Leighton’s absence abroad, due to ill health in 1895.

   Mr John R Clayton writes to us from the Arts Club, in Dover-street Piccadilly under date January 17^th as follows:

By the unexpected death on the 16^th inst of Mr Henry T Wells RA, a man of marked and interesting personality was lost alike to circles of art and friendship. Those who knew him long and intimately were conscious of his never-failing integrity in every though and act. He was an omniverous reader and animated conversationalist. As an artist of untiring studentship in London and Paris, his career from early boyhood to his election to full membership of the Royal Academy was one of constantly growing distinction. To the constitutional interests of the institution he was devoted. To its councils he gave the wholehearted and powerful aid of his remarkable foresight and judgement, not supposed to be common in artists, in matters of business.

In the early days of his career he was in sympathetic friendship with Millais, the Rossettis, Ford Madox Brown, Holman Hunt, Woolner, Foley the sculptor and many others of celebrity. In later times his circle of friends was enlarged by the addition of men distinguished in science, the Legislature, the Army, and the law, whose portraits he had painted. Mr Wells was no less happy in his domestic life, for he married a lady remarkable for her beauty and her abilities as an artist and writer, whose articles appeared in The Saturday Review. She was a sister of Mr George P Boyce the able member of the Royal Society of Watercolours. Mr Wells became early in his married life a widower with 3 children. One of these was married to Mr Arthur E Street, son of his friend Mr G E Street RA, the well-known architect. One of Mr Wells’s sisters became the wife of his old fellow-student Mr H Armstead RA, the distinguished sculptor. Thus the career of Mr Wells affords an instance of an artist enthusiastic in his calling, prudent in his undertakings, faultless in his integrity, devoted to his family, and loyal to his friends.