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Keith Henderson OBE RSW ROI RP (1883-1982)


Alan Keith Henderson, OBE RSW RWS ROI RP (1883-1982)

Keith Henderson was a wide-ranging and sometimes idiosyncratic Scottish artist, who was equally skilled as a painter and illustrator. His black and white book illustrations, his posters for the Empire Marketing Board and his commissions as an Official War Artist all show him to have been a master of design.

Keith Henderson was born in Kensington, London, on 16 April 1883, one of the three children of George MacDonald Henderson, barrister-at-law, and Constance Helen (née Keith). His father worked at Lincoln’s Inn, and Keith grew up between 18 Kensington Gardens Square, in London, and Campfield House, near Glassel, in Aberdeenshire. He was educated at Orme Square School and Marlborough College, and then studied art, against his father’s wishes, at the Slade School of Art and the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, Paris. While in Paris, he shared a studio with Maxwell Armfield, Norman Wilkinson ‘of Four Oaks’ and the French sculptor, Gaston Lachaise.