Herbert Edward Badham

Herbert Badham was an Australian realist painter and art teacher who specialised in figures, urban life and beach scenes. He was born in 1899 in Watsons Bay, a suburb of Sydney, to Herbert Lewis Badham and his wife Mary. He was one of five children in the family. He enlisted in the Australian Royal Navy in 1917 to serve in World War I. From 1925 to 1938, he studied painting at the Julian Ashton Art School, where he was tutored by Julian Ashton, George Washington Lambert and Henry Gibbons. He was an accomplished figure painter, and his realistic domestic interiors and views of contemporary life in Sydney (its theatres, cinema, fairgrounds and hotels) are comparable with American realist Edward Hopper. His work was exhibited at the Society of Artists from 1927 to his death. In 1939, his first solo exhibition took place at the Grosvenor Gallery, Sydney. Badham taught painting at the East Sydney Technical College from 1938 to 1961. He was passionate about art education and published two books on Australian art: A Study of Australian Art in 1949 and A Gallery of Australian Art in 1954. He also wrote articles and reviews for various publications, such as Art in Australia and The Home. He married dressmaker Enid Wilson in Sydney in 1927. Their daughter, Chebi Badham, became an artist and animator. Badham died on 24 September 1961, aged 62. He had suffered from ill health caused by a fever he contracted while visiting South Africa in 1958. His obituary reported that he died in Royal South Sydney Hospital and that he was head teacher at the National Art School, East Sydney. His work is represented in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the National Gallery of Victoria, the National Portrait Gallery and other state and regional galleries.