Herbert Johnson Harvey Self Portrait

Pastel on paper, signed lower right

Image size: 9 2/3 x 8 1/2 inches (24.5 x 21.5 cm)

Original Frame

Exhibited

The Fine Art Society, January 1970

The influence of Rembrandt upon Harvey’s portraiture is instantly recognisable within this self-portrait. The quizzical expression upon Harvey’s face is reminiscent of Rembrandt’s focus on emotional expressions, whilst also characterising the artist as jovial. The attention to detail is astonishing, with the lines and wrinkles of the face being rendered so realistically that the drawn self-portrait has a photographic quality to it. The black circles under his eyes and the keen focus on areas of shadow and light around the eye sockets and chin mark Harvey as a master of replicating light in his works. Splashes of colour, in the blue eyes and red lips, serve to accentuate the life-like quality of this arresting piece.

Herbert Johnson Harvey

Harvey was born in Hammersmith in 1884, the son of noted animal and landscape artist John Rabone Harvey, who gave his son his first dose of artistic education. At the age of 4, Harvey and his family moved to Birmingham, where he would eventually study at the Birmingham School of Art.

In 1911, Harvey moved to London to commence studies at the Royal College of Art after winning a scholarship to study there. He further won a travelling scholarship to study Old Master works in Italy, where he would later return the year before his death. This visit to Italy would undoubtedly influence the Old Master style of Harvey’s portraiture, as well as encounters with the works of Rembrandt. Despite moving away, Harvey retained his close ties with Birmingham by joining and exhibiting with the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists. As well as the RBSA, Harvey exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1910 and the Paris Salon. During the First World War, he befriended Winston Churchill and gave him painting lessons, as well as painting a portrait of Clementine Churchill. 

Harvey died of an unexpected heart attack in 1928, leaving behind a legacy that established him as a celebrated artist of Old Master-style portraits. He depicted both the poor and the wealthy equally and sympathetically. His works can be seen in Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and the British Museum, as well as further afield in Washington’s National Gallery of Art and the Rhode Island School of Design Museum.