Harold Hope Read

1882 - 1959

England Figurative artist and illustrator, born in Greenwich, southeast London. His Quaker family is known to have been well educated, one of Harolds older brothers becoming a doctor and another a solicitor, his father being an independent minister.

Harold became an art student in his teens and by 1905 was submitting cartoons to the magazine Punch. From the mid 1920s he lived as an illustrator for various magazines and he is reputed to have been a cartoonist for the London Evening Standard.

He exhibited at the RA, RI, NEAC, NS, PS and RBA.

Reads reputation was revived in 1999 when a leading London Auction House held an important retrospective sale of his work.

His work captured the colour and diversity of pre-War England