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Sir Henry George "Harry" Rushbury (1889-1968) was an English painter and etcher. Born the son of a clerk in Harborne, then on the outskirts of Birmingham, Rushbury studied on a scholarship under Robert Catterson Smith at the Birmingham School of Art from the age of thirteen. He worked as an assistant to arts and crafts artist Henry Payne, chiefly as a stained-glass artist, until 1912 when he moved to London, where he shared lodgings with fellow Birmingham student, Gerald Brockhurst, who is well represented in Te Papa's collection.
Rushbury was an official war artist during World War I, and took up etching and drypoint under the influence of Francis Dodd before studying briefly under Henry Tonks at the Slade School of Art in 1921.
He was elected a member of the New English Art Club in 1917, the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers in 1921, the Royal Society of Painters in Water Colours in 1922, and the Royal Academy in 1936. In 1940 he was again appointed an official war artist until 1945. In 1949, he was elected Keeper of the Royal Academy and Head of the Royal Academy Schools, a post he held until 1964. He was knighted in the same year.
The greatest influence on Rushbury's work was Muirhead Bone. He produced consistently technically excellent works, using diamond-point, burin and burr, of carefully observed and studied architecture, a genre made famous by Bone and to a lesser extent Dodd. With a few minute grooves and flecks cut in the surface of a copper plate, Rushbury could conjure extraordinary effects of mood and atmosphere.
In this outstanding drypoint, Rushbury depicts a 19th-century drawbridge, dominating the composition, with commercial buildings either side - this is the Canal de la Douane (Customs House), in the centre of Old Marseilles. Numerous boats are moored nearby, conveying the sense of this being the Venice of Marseilles, and while Rushbury hints at the bustle of the port, it had in fact been in economic decline for many years followng the construction of large docks at Lazaret. Within five years of this depiction, the Canal de la Douane had disappeared - filled in, ostensibly for sanitary reasons and with public support at the time - but really to cater for the modernising forces of motor cars and trams. It now seems like a tragic loss, and period photographs as well as this print ram home this message, making one wish people at the time had been more sensible - as Rushbury clearly was - to the romantic picturesqueness of this ambience.
Te Papa owns another impression of this print (1971-0012-44); they were both donated to the National Art Gallery by Sir John Ilott.
See: Wikipedia, 'Henry Rushbury', https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Rushbury
Dr Mark Stocker Curator, Historical International Art May 2018