White Cliffs

Here the chalk, white cliff are seen from a towering viewpoint as the audience is forced to look down at drop of the cliffs to the sea below. Similar to the works of the Impressionists such as Monet, here Speed paints by identifying areas of light and shadow as priority over the details of the scene.

Harold Speed

Born in London on the 11th of February 1872, Harold Speed was an English oil and watercolour painter. His practice focused on portraiture, figurative and historical compositions as well as the creation of instructional books for artists focusing on technique. 

Speed was the son of an architect, spending his early life following after his father, he initially studied architecture at the Royal college of Art but after winning a gold medal for life studies in 1890, switched courses to study painting at the Royal Academy Schools from 1891-1896. In 1893 Speed went on to win a travel scholarship which took him to France, Belgium, Italy and Spain where he made a series of landscape paintings before exhibiting for the first time and painting a fresco named ‘Autumn’ at the Royal Academy in the same year.

In 1896 Speed was elected as a member of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters and by 1906 was an associate of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Paris, before being elected as the Master of the Art Workers’ Guild in 1916. Speed also became a member of the New Society of Artists which formed in 1921 as a space for artists whose work was rejected by the Royal Academy. 

In 1907 he exhibited in his first one-man show at the Leicester Galleries and in 1928 was part of the painting event at the 1928 summer Olympics art competition but failed to win any medals. And later in 1930 provided paintings for the new chapel at Wesley House, Cambridge.

Speed died in March 1957 and his death was recorded in the 1956 Journal of the Royal Society of Arts

Museums
The National Portrait Gallery, London
University of Oxford
Victoria and Albert Museum
Manchester Art Gallery
Royal Academy of Art
Tate Galleries
Sheffield Museum
National Trust

Exhibitions

Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, 1893
Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, 1894
Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, 1896
Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, 1900
Royal Academy Summer Exhibition,1901
Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, 1902
Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, 1906
Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, 1908
Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, 1909
Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, 1910
Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, 1911
Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, 1914
Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, 1915
Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, 1918
Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, 1919
Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, 1920
Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, 1921
Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, 1922
Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, 1923
Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, 1924
Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, 1926
Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, 1928
Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, 1929
Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, 1934
Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, 1936
Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, 1938
Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, 1939
Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, 1941
Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, 1943