Edward Henry Handley-Read RBA

1870 - 1935

Edward Handley-Read was born in Kensington and studied at the Westminster School of Art and the Royal Academy Schools. He started work as an illustrator for The Graphic and The Illustrated London News and was elected to the Royal Society of British Artists in 1895. In World War I, he volunteered for the Artists Rifles, attaining the rank of Captain. Many of Handley-Read's pictures of scenes from the Western Front were shown at the Leicester Galleries in a series of exhibitions entitled "The British Firing-Line", the first of which took place in May 1916. It was alleged at the time that Handley-Read may have utilised photographs to provide some of his battlefield subject matter to help him meet exhibition deadlines back in London. It is not clear whether such doubts apply to this work, which is an evocative piece of artistic reportage of an iconic scene. For a discussion of Handley-Read's watercolours of the Western Front, see A Terrible Beauty (2010), by Paul Gough. Nonetheless, his large watercolours and drawings brought the war to the attention of London gallery goers.