Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Wells, Henry Tanworth
WELLS, HENRY TANWORTH (1828–1903), portrait-painter in oils and miniature, born on 12 Dec. 1828 in Marylebone, was only son of Henry Tanworth Wells, merchant, by his wife Charlotte Henman. One sister, Augusta, was an exhibitor at the Royal Academy, and another sister, Sarah, married Henry Hugh Armstead. Educated at Lancing, Wells was apprenticed in 1843 as a lithographic draughtsman to Messrs. Dickinson, with whom he soon, however, began work as a miniature-painter. His studies were continued in the evening at Leigh's school. In 1850 he spent six months at Couture's atelier in Paris. He also joined a society which met every evening in Clipstone Street for drawing and criticism. D. G. Rossetti, C. Keene, J. R. Clayton, F. Smallfield, the brothers E. and G. Dalziel, and G. P. Boyce were fellow members. From his youth Wells devoted himself to portraiture. At first he practised exclusively as a miniature painter, much in the manner of Sir W. Ross, with whom and Robert Thorburn he shared the practice of the time. Between 1846 and 1860 Wells contributed over seventy miniatures, principally of ladies and children, all of which are now in private hands, to the Royal Academy exhibitions. Among these the most noticeable are the Princess Mary of Cambridge, painted in 1853 by command for Queen Victoria, and whole-lengths of the Duchess of Sutherland (as Lady Stafford), Countess Waldegrave, and Mrs. Popham (1860).
Wells's sympathies were mildly attached in the early days of his career to the Pre-Raphaelites, and he counted among his friends many of the fraternity, though his own work remained uninfluenced by them. In December 1857, when in Rome, he married Joanna Mary Boyce, herself a gifted painter and writer for the ‘Saturday Review,’ and sister of George P. Boyce, the watercolour artist. Her ‘Elgiva,’ exhibited in the Academy in 1855, was pronounced by Madox Brown to be the work of ‘the best hand in the rooms,’ and after her premature death in 1861 William Rossetti pronounced her to have been ‘the best painter that ever handled a brush with the female hand.’ A charming miniature group painted by Wells in 1859–60 of himself standing beside her, riding a donkey, on a single piece of ivory 21 × 15½ inches (now owned by his daughter, Mrs. Hadley), is a fine example of his latest miniature work and perhaps his largest. Another group of himself, his wife, George Boyce, and John Clayton (owned by his elder daughter, Mrs. Street), painted in oils (1861), is the best example of his early work in this medium.
From 1861 Wells, fearing the strain upon his eyesight, abandoned miniature painting, and in that year contributed to Burlington House his first large work in oils, a portrait of Lord Ranelagh, lieutenant-colonel of the south Middlesex volunteers, now at the headquarters of the corps. Within the next decade he painted numerous other volunteers' portraits singly and in groups. Of the latter two are well known: the earlier group, ‘Volunteers at the Firing Point,’ a large canvas painted in 1866, the year of his election as associate of the Royal Academy, was engraved in mezzotint by Atkinson. This picture, now in the Diploma Gallery, was exchanged for another work ‘News and Letters at the Loch Side’ (1868), which formerly hung there and now belongs to Mrs. Nicholson at Arisaig House. The later group, ‘Earl and Countess Spencer at Wimbledon,’ with Lords Ducie, Grosvenor, and Elcho and others, was exhibited in 1868 (now the property of Earl Spencer). These and ‘The Queen and her Judges at the Opening of the Royal Courts of Justice’ (1887), are among the best of his larger works. In 1870 Wells was elected a full member of the Royal Academy.
Among the many presentation portraits painted by Wells are Hon. Robert Marsham, Warden, for Merton College (1866), the duke of Devonshire for the Iron and Steel Institute (1872), Sir S. J. Gibbons (1873), Lord Mayor, for the Salters' Company, Lord Chancellor Selborne (1874), for the Mercers' Company, Samuel Morley (1874), for the Congregational Memorial Hall, Rt. Hon. W. E. Forster (1875), Sir Lowthian Bell, F.R.S. (1895), for Newcastle-on-Tyne (photogravure by R. Paulussen), and Sir W. Macpherson (1901), for the Calcutta Turf Club. Other celebrities painted were Earl Spencer, K.G. (1867), engraved by S. Cousins, General Sir R. Buller (1889), Sir M. Hicks Beach (1896) the Bishop of Ripon (1897), and the Earl of Pembroke (1898); and among ladies who sat to him were the three daughters of Sir I. Lowthian Bell, exhibited in 1865 as ‘Tableau Vivant,’ Lady Coleridge, painted in miniature (1891), Miss Ethel Davis (1896), Mrs. Thewlis Johnson (1890), the Hon. Mrs. Sydney Smith (1903), Lady Wyllie (1890), and his daughter, Mrs. Street (1883).
The most popular of Wells's works was, however, a painting of Queen Victoria, as princess, receiving the news of her accession from the archbishop of Canterbury and the Marquess Conyngham, exhibited in 1880 as ‘Victoria Regina.’ This painting was presented by the artist's daughters to the National Gallery of British Art, and a second version is at Buckingham Palace.
In 1870 Wells succeeded George Richmond, R.A., as limner to Grillion's Club, and in this capacity drew crayon portraits of some fifty of its distinguished members, chiefly political, during the following thirty years. Many of these drawings were exhibited; a few were etched by C. W. Sherborn, and the rest were either engravedgraved by C. Holl, J. Brown, J. Stodart, and W. Roffe, or reproduced by autotype. As a man of business and a strenuous supporter of the constitutional rights and privileges of the Academy, Wells was a valued member of the council, and in the agitation for reform, initiated in August and September 1886 in ‘The Times’ by Holman Hunt, he was the most vigorous defender of the existing order of affairs. He was nominated by Lord Leighton to act as his deputy on certain occasions during the president's absence abroad through ill-health in 1895. In 1879, at the time of the royal commission, and again in connection with the bill in 1900, he worked hard for the cause of artistic copyright.
Wells contributed, between 1846 and 1903, 287 works to the Royal Academy exhibitions, and, in addition to those already mentioned as being engraved, about forty-five were reproduced in Cassell's ‘Royal Academy Pictures’ (1891–1903). His portraits are usually signed with his monogram and dated.
Wells died at his residence, Thorpe Lodge, Campden Hill, on 16 Jan. 1903, and was buried at Kensal Green cemetery. He was survived by his two daughters, Alice Joanna (Mrs. A. E. Street) and Joanna Margaret (Mrs. W. Hadley). His son Sidney Boyce died in 1869. His portrait, painted by himself in 1897, and a bust by Sir J. E. Boehm (1888), belong to his elder daughter.
[The Times, 19 Jan. 1903, and other press notices; Athenæum, 24 Jan. 1903; Who's Who, 1903; Men of Mark, 1878; Royal Acad. Catalogues; A. Graves, Royal Acad. Exhibitors, 1906; Royal Acad. Pictures, Cassell and Co., 1891–1903; W. M. Rossetti, Pre-Raphaelite Letters and Diaries, 1900; Grillion's Club portraits; information from Wells's daughters and Mr. A. E. Street.]