Henry Dunkin Shepard was born on 3 July 1845 in London, to parents Robert and Alicia. He was the youngest son of 11 children; four sons and seven daughters.
He married Harriet Jessie Lee on 14 September 1875. They would have three children; Ethel Jessie (born 1876), Cyril Henry (born 1877) and Ernest Howard (born 1879). Their youngest child, known today as E H Shepard, would become one of the greatest British illustrators of the 20th century.
Professionally, Henry Shepard worked as an architect and was a Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects. His wife, Jessie, was the daughter of the distinguished watercolourist William Lee, and they belonged to an artistic and theatrical social circle in London.
They were close family friends with the portrait artist Thomas Dicksee, and remained so even after Jessie’s premature death in 1890. His son and artist, Frank Dicksee, would later become the President of the Royal Academy. A portrait painted by Henry of a young E H Shepard is suggested to be strongly influenced by Frank Dicksee’s work. (Rawle Knox, The Work of E H Shepard, page 15).
Henry Shepard attended evening classes at Heatherley’s School of Art and made frequent painting trips to France, particularly Normandy. In Drawn from Memory, E H Shepard proudly recalls the stained glass on the front door of their house in Kent Terrace that was designed by his father, as well as other furniture in their home (page 12). During his lifetime, Shepard’s paintings were exhibited in London at the Royal Academy of Arts, Royal Society of British Artists and the Royal Institute of Painters in Water-Colours. Outside of London, his work was exhibited at the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists, Royal Hibernian Academy, Manchester Academy of Fine Arts and the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool.
In the later years of his life, Henry Dunkin Shepard suffered badly with arthritis, and his sons cared for him in Blackheath when he could no longer walk. He was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis shortly before his death in London, on 19 May 1902.
