Humphrey Spender

Humphrey Spender (1910–2005) was a British photographer, painter, printmaker, textile designer and teacher. Best known initially for his pioneering documentary photography of the 1930s, he later devoted himself increasingly to painting and design, developing an atmospheric response to landscape, still life and the natural world.

Born in London, Spender studied History of Art at the University of Freiburg before training as an architect at the Architectural Association between 1929 and 1934. During these years he moved within a remarkable literary and artistic circle that included his brother Stephen Spender, W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood. He also photographed artists including Ben Nicholson and John Banting.

In 1934 Spender established a photographic studio in London and soon began working for magazines including Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar and the Daily Mirror, where he published under the name “Lensman”. His photographs of housing and working-class life in London led to his involvement with Mass Observation, for which he made more than 900 photographs in Bolton during 1937–38. The resulting Worktown images are now regarded as among the most important records of everyday British life between the wars.

Spender subsequently worked for Picture Post and during the Second World War served as an official photographer and interpreter of aerial reconnaissance photographs. After the war, however, he increasingly moved away from professional photography towards painting, printmaking and textile design.

His paintings and prints often drew upon landscape and still life. Rather than the documentary precision of his photographs, these works allowed him greater freedom in colour, surface and form. From the late 1960s, after moving to Essex, marshes, waterways, vegetation and changing light became particularly important subjects.

The Redfern Gallery was closely involved with Spender’s work during the post-war period. In 1951 his paintings and works on paper were shown at Redfern alongside Patrick Heron, Fred Uhlman, Graham Sutherland, Keith Vaughan, Marek Zulawski, Reginald Weston and Prunella Clough. His colour lithographs were also included in the gallery’s French and English Original Colour Lithographs exhibition that year. Spender subsequently held solo painting exhibitions at The Redfern Gallery, forming an important part of his exhibiting career.

Alongside his painting, Spender became an accomplished textile designer. In 1953 he joined the Textile Department at the Royal College of Art, where he taught until 1975, combining teaching with work in painting, printmaking and design.

Spender never entirely abandoned photography, and renewed interest in his documentary work brought it to a new audience late in his life. In 2002–03 the National Portrait Gallery presented In Close Up: Humphrey Spender, devoted to his photographic career.

His work is represented in major public collections including the National Portrait Gallery, National Galleries of Scotland and Tate; his 1969 lithograph Reedy Pool, Essex is in the Tate collection.

Spender’s career is unusual in the breadth with which he moved between photography, painting and design. Across these different media, his work remained grounded in close observation — first of people and social life, and later of landscape, colour and natural form.