Eric Kennington (1888-1960)

Sculptor, draughtsman and painter. Born in London, son of the artist Thomas Benjamin Kennington, he studied at Lambeth School of Art (1906-08) and afterwards at the City and Guild School. He exhibited at the RA from 1920; and also showed at Leicester Galleries, Fine Art Society, Goupil Gallery, ROI and RP. Kennington was an Official War Artist, 1916-19, after being invalided out of the army in June 1915. The experience was to have a marked influence on his work: his first one-man show at the Goupil Gallery, April-October 1916, of the Kensingtons at Laventie, created a great impression and identified him in the public mind with depictions of men of action. Soon after the war he travelled in Jordan and Syria (March-May 1921) to illustrate T. E. Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom. During World War II he produced two books: Drawing the RAF, 1942, and Britain's Home Guard, 1945. He was elected RA in 1959 and died at Reading, Ber