Harry TITTENSOR
(Burslem 1887 - Barlaston 1942)
The Cafe, Honfleur
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Watercolour.
Inscribed H. TITTENSOR / THE BOAT HOUSE / BARLASTON, STOKE-ON-TRENT / TITLE / THE CAFE, HONFLEUR. / NO.1 on a label attached to the old backing board
545 x 482 mm. (21 3/8 x 19 in.) [sheet]
Inscribed H. TITTENSOR / THE BOAT HOUSE / BARLASTON, STOKE-ON-TRENT / TITLE / THE CAFE, HONFLEUR. / NO.1 on a label attached to the old backing board
545 x 482 mm. (21 3/8 x 19 in.) [sheet]
The son of a Staffordshire potter, Harry Tittensor started his career as a ceramic painter and designer. An apprentice at the Doulton & Co. factory from 1900 onwards, he painted landscapes and figure scenes on vases, and also designed a number of individual Doulton figurines, such as The Gainsborough Hat, The Parson’s Daughter and Pretty Lady. From 1925 onwards Tittensor focused his energies on topographical painting in oils and watercolour, although he also produced a number of portraits and still life subjects. He began making regular visits to Normandy and Brittany, painting scenes in Abbeville, Amiens, Bayeux, Beauvais, Honfleur, Louviers, Mont Saint-Michel, Rouen, Quimper, Saint-Malo and elsewhere in France. He also seems to have made painting tours to the Belgium, Holland and Germany, as well as Cornwall. His paintings and watercolours of landscapes and town views were exhibited at the Royal Academy, the Royal Institute of Painters in Water-Colours (of which he became a member in 1931) and the Fine Art Society in London, as well as the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, the Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts and the Royal Hibernian Academy in Dublin.
Tittensor also designed travel posters for the London and North Eastern Railways, and taught at the Burslem School of Art, where he had studied in his youth, while in 1935 he wrote an article entitled ‘Water-Colour and the Picturesque’ for The Studio magazine. He died at the age of fifty-five, and a few months later a memorial exhibition was held at the Hanley Museum and Art Gallery in Stoke-on-Trent. Works by Tittensor are today in the collections of the Bradford Art Gallery, the Cheltenham Museum and Art Gallery, the Potteries Museum & Art Gallery in Stoke-on-Trent and the National Railway Museum in York.
Provenance
London, Royal Academy, Summer Exhibition, 1929, no.817
Glasgow, Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts, Annual Exhibition, 1929, no.703 (priced at £10).