Henry Courtney Selous was born Henry Courtney Slous [1] at 2 Panton Street, Haymarket, London, England on 25 April 1803, the son of Gideon Slous (1771-1856), a painter specialising in miniatures. He initially trained with his father before entering the Royal Academy Schools in London in 1818. That year he exhibited for the first time at the Royal Academy in London and continued to do so regularly for many years. In 1825 he was commissioned by Charles Knight produce 12 illustrations of passages from Shakespeare's The Tempest. Further commissions for his work as an illustrator followed, notable among which were an edition of John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress (London: Holloway, 1844); Sintram and his Companions by de la Motte Fouque (London: Burns, 1844); Cassell's Illustrated Shakespeare (London: Cassell, Petter & Galpin, 1868); and Hereward the Wake by Charles Kingsley (London: The Art Union, 1870) In the late 1820s Selous began working as principal assistant painter of a series of vast canvas panoramas produced by John and Robert Burford and displayed at the Leicester Square Rotunda in London.
In the early 1840s Selous was commissioned to paint King Alfred Submitting his Code of Law (1844) for the Law Society on Chancery Lane, London and in the 1860s he created a large-scale fresco version of Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper.
In the 1850s Selous produced what was possibly his most successful painting, The Opening of the Great Exhibition (1851), which hangs in the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.
In the 1870s Selous produced a series of topographical depictions of the Holy Land, following a visit there. He also began writing and illustrating children's books. He died at Winsford Tower, Beaworthy, Devon, on 24 [or 23 - sources differ] September 1890
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[1] He changed his name to Selous in the late 1830s
Text source: Art History Research net (AHR net)
Text source: Art History Research net (AHR net)
