Harold Swanwick 1866 - 1929

Joseph Harold Swanwick was a well known painter of landscapes and coastal subjects in both oil and watercolour. He was born at Middlewich in Cheshire and studied art in Liverpool, London and at the Academie Julian in Paris. Harold Swanwick exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1889 and he was elected a member of the prestigious Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours in 1898 and of the Royal Institute of Oil Painters in 1909. During his early career Swanwick painted extensively in North Wales, the Isle of Man, southern Europe and North Africa. He settled at Wilmington in East Sussex in 1908 and lived there for the rest of his life. He delighted in the rural life and Downland landscape and was especially noted for his paintings in both oil and watercolour of farm workers and their heavy horses. Swanwick’s work is held in a number of public collections, especially in the Towner Art Gallery in Eastbourne, and also at National Museums Liverpool, Gallery Oldham, Reading Museum and York Museums Trust. (Grant Waters - author of Dictionary of British Artists 1900-1945)