33 Facts About Olive Henry

Olive Henry HRUA was a Northern Irish artist known for her painting, photography and stained glass design.

Olive Henry was a founding member of the Ulster Society of Women Artists and is believed to have been the only female stained glass artist working in Northern Ireland in the first half of the twentieth century.

Olive Henry was born in Belfast on 15 January 1902, the daughter of the tea merchant George Adams Henry.

Olive Henry attended Mount Pottinger National School, and Victoria College, before expanding her studies at night classes at the Belfast School of Art.

Olive Henry was a founding member, with Gladys Maccabe, of the Ulster Society of Women Artists and was president of the society from 1979 to 1981.

Olive Henry exhibited four works, all landscapes in oil, and then a further two works in the following year.

In 1931 Olive Henry showed a further two works with the successor to the Belfast Art Society, the Ulster Academy of Arts.

Olive Henry had a keen interest in photography from an early age and won various awards for her photographs.

Olive Henry went on to write a regular column for Amateur Photographer throughout the 1930s.

In January 1935 Olive Henry was appointed leader of a local sketching group by the Youth Hostel Association.

In December 1935 Olive Henry was commended for a sketch called River Pool, submitted to a competition judged by James Humbert Craig on behalf of the Youth Hostel Association, presented alongside Port Muck in a show with the sketching group.

Olive Henry contributed Green Boat, which she had presented earlier in the year to the Ulster Academy of Arts, and included Off the Scilly Isles amongst pictures from Brittany and Bavaria.

In 1937 Olive Henry was elected an Associate of the Ulster Academy of Arts.

In 1938 Olive Henry presented three watercolours to the Ulster Academy of Arts.

Olive Henry has two very Breton studies -one Breton Departure Piece is conceived plainly as decoration, while the other Sea Mill has an emotional as well as decorative appeal and both are characterised by firmness of drawing and a lovely sense of colour.

Olive Henry displayed a sense of humour in her use of black-out paint, roadblocks and air raid shelters in one of the watercolours on show.

Olive Henry was a regular exhibitor with the Water Colour Society of Ireland, and contributed more than one hundred works to their exhibitions between 1943 and 1986.

Olive Henry joined Violet McAdoo in a joint exhibition at the Belfast Museum and Art Gallery in 1944.

The MacGaffin Gallery at Pottinger's Entry was the venue for a group exhibition of experimental and modernist works with Nevill Johnson, Aaron McAfee and the MacCabes in 1946, where Olive Henry exhibited seven paintings.

Quayside was one of three pictures that Olive Henry presented at the Ulster Academy in 1946.

Olive Henry showed it with the Watercolour Society of Ireland in the following year and at CEMA's Some Ulster Paintings exhibition in that same year.

Twenty-four of the works from the CEMA collection, including Olive Henry's painting, were later presented at their Donegall Place gallery in 1954.

Olive Henry debuted at the 1948 Irish Exhibition of Living Art with one painting and returned in each of the subsequent ten years with a total of 20 pictures.

Olive Henry was elected as an Honorary Academician of the Ulster Academy of Arts in 1948.

Olive Henry displayed one work Harbour, Northern Ireland with Violet McAdoo at the 88th exhibition of the Society of Women Artists at the Royal Institute Galleries in London during the summer of 1949.

Just a few months later Olive Henry's work was back in London for the United Society of Artists annual exhibition where she showed Gossip and Shell and Sail.

Olive Henry was awarded a travel scholarship from the Soroptomists of Belgium in 1957, which enabled her to study stained glass in the country.

Olive Henry was the President of Soroptomist Club of Belfast from 1960 to 1961, where she had been a member since its foundation in 1932.

Miss Olive Henry is at once one of the most forceful and most discreet of our painters -forceful in the clarity of her design and the boldness of her colour; discreet in her detail and the elimination of non-essentials.

Olive Henry was to exhibit with the society throughout her life.

In 1965 Olive Henry joined twelve Ulster artists including Alice Berger-Hammerschlag, Basil Blackshaw, Colin Middleton, Romeo Toogood, and Mercy Hunter in a diverse exhibition of landscape paintings at the Arts Council Of Northern Ireland Gallery.

Olive Henry showed at the Royal Ulster Academy Annual Exhibition in 1987 for the last time.

Olive Henry died on 8 November 1989 at Crawfordsburn, County Down.