Albert Houthuesen

Albert Houthuesen was born in the Oude Pijp neighbourhood of Amsterdam, at 263 Albert Cuypstraat, the eldest of the four children of Jean Charles Pierre Houthuesen (1877–1911), a painter and musician, and his wife Elisabeth Petronella Emma, née Wedemeyer (1873–1966). After Jean Charles Pierre's early death, when Albert was 8 years old, the family moved near Elisabeth's mother in London, and Elisabeth opened a boarding house at 20 Constantine Road, near Hampstead Heath.[1]^: 19

The former Saint Martin's School of Art building, in Charing Cross Road

Houthuesen left school aged 14 and went to work for a grocer, then as a lens fitter, apprentice engraver, tailor's stencil cutter, and furniture restorer.[1]^{: 31-39, 55} At the same time, he began attending evening classes at Saint Martin's School of Art.[1]^: 32-34 He shared a studio with artists Gerald Ososki, Barnett Freedman and Reginald Brill in Howland Street (Fitzrovia).[1]^: 40-44 Though he loved watching Charlie Chaplin, he preferred theatre to film, particularly enjoying performances by the comedians George Robey and Little Tich.[1]^: 54-55

In 1921, he made the first of three trips to Holland, spending time with an uncle, the painter and potter Bernard Boeziek.[1]^: 45-47 He became a British citizen in 1922.[1]^: 248 In 1923–1924, he was designing lettering for the architectural sculpture firm Aumonier.[1]^: 55-56

Thanks to William Rothenstein, principal of the Royal College of Art, Houthuesen was eventually able to obtain a scholarship to attend the RCA between 1924 and 1927,[1]^: 56-71[2] with contemporaries Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Edward Burra, Ceri Richards and Cecil Collins.[3] Rothenstein invited Houthuesen to stay when his deeply unhappy home life prevented him from studying effectively.[1]^: 57-62 Vivian Pitchforth is reported to have seen particular promise in Houthuesen's student work.[4]

The Working Men's College in Camden

In 1927, at the RCA, Houthuesen also met his future wife Catherine Dean.[1]^: 73-74 He stayed on at college as a student demonstrator until the following summer.[1]^: 248 He then gave evening art classes at the Mary Ward Settlement and the Working Men's College with colleagues Percy Horton and Barnett Freedman, under the directorship of James Laver.[1]^: 75-76 [5] He taught at the Working Men's College until 1938.[1]^: 105 In 1929, he undertook his first commission for Herbrand Russell, 11th Duke of Bedford, making copies of enamel miniature portraits.[1]^{: 76, 248}

Abbey Gardens, St John's Wood

Albert Houthuesen married Catherine Dean in 1931. They lived in a flat at 20 Abbey Gardens in St John's Wood.[1]^{: 82, 105} Throughout the 1930s they visited Trelogan, near the Point of Ayr colliery in north east Wales, staying in Mersey Cottage,[6] owned by Catherine's aunts.[1]^{: 85, 97, 113} Here Houthuesen painted landscapes and portraits of colliers.

In spring 1936, Houthuesen suffered an internal hemorrhage due to a duodenal ulcer, from which it took him a long time to recover.[1]^: 102

When Herbrand Russell's wife, the aviator and ornithologist Mary Russell, Duchess of Bedford, died in a plane crash in March 1937, the duke commissioned a stained-glass memorial window in St Mary's Church, Woburn of Saint Francis of Assisi surrounded by birds.[7]

In 1938, the Houthuesens moved to 37b Greville Road, not far from their previous London home.[1]^: 106

In September 1940 the house of the Houthuesens' immediate neighbour and landlord, sculptor Alfred Frank Hardiman, was bombed in the Blitz.[8] Nobody was hurt, but the house was uninhabitable.[1]^: 110 The Houthuesens returned to Trelogan.[1]^: 113-114

Loversall

From late 1941 until the end of the war, they lived in Yorkshire, just south of Doncaster, where St Gabriel's College, the teacher training college where Catherine worked, was evacuated. They lived first in a cottage in Letwell, then in the Farm House in Loversall, and by summer 1943 at 21 St Mary's Gate in Tickhill.[1]^: 111-34 Houthuesen was rejected from the army on health grounds and worked as a draughtsman for the London and North Eastern Railway at the Doncaster Works. He suffered a severe nervous breakdown and was discharged in March 1944.[1]^: 115-126

He made his first clown drawings in 1944, after seeing a family of Russian Jewish clowns, the Hermans, at the Grand Theatre in Doncaster.[1]^: 131-133

Love Walk, Denmark Hill

The Houthuesens returned to London at the end of the war and lived in Lady Margaret Vicarage in Chatham Street, Southwark, where they acted as wardens for St Gabriel's College students accommodated there.[1]^: 137-39 Houthuesen was able to attend ballets at Covent Garden and the Adelphi Theatre, such as Los Caprichos (inspired by the Goya etchings),[9] Petrushka, The Three-Cornered Hat, and Les Sylphides.[1]^: 140-149

In autumn 1950, the Houthuesens moved again, to (then) semi-derelict Stone Hall with overgrown gardens, in Oxted, Surrey, and then again, in July 1952, to their final home at 5 Love Walk, in Denmark Hill, Camberwell.[1]^{: 152-57, 249}

Houthuesen helped to build up the art collection at St Gabriel's College.[10][11] His acquisitions included a woodcut of The Ecstasy of Mary Madgalene by Albrecht Dürer, a pencil drawing of Whitehaven on the Cumbrian coast by J. M. W. Turner,[12] a preparatory pencil drawing of three horses' heads for The Frugal Meal by John Frederick Herring Sr.,[13] and an aquatint of Christ by Georges Rouault.[14] After the college closed in 1978, the collection was transferred to an educational trust and subsequently loaned to Goldsmiths, University of London.

Houthuesen suffered continued ill-health, spending eight weeks in the Gordon Hospital in spring and summer 1961, three weeks in King's College Hospital in early 1965, and suffering a stroke in the 1970s.[1]^{: 166-167, 171, 3}

In 1976 the BBC broadcast Walk to the Moon: The Story of Albert Houthuesen, a film about Houthuesen's life and work, directed by John Armstrong (1928–2004).[15] The title is a reference to the Dutch expression Loop naar de maan, Houthuesen's mother's response to requests for art supplies.[1]^: 1

Albert Houthuesen died on 20 October 1979. A memorial exhibition was held in 1981 at the South London Art Gallery.[10]