Versatile artist and teacher, born in Manchester. He was given the same first names as his grandfather’s cousin, the artist Henry Clarence Whaite (1828–1912), with whom he has been confused. His daughter was the artist Gillian Whaite, with whom he shared shows at South London Art Gallery, 1979, and the Museum of Garden History, 1990. H Clarence Whaite, as he is usually known, was born in Manchester, where from 14 he studied art at the Manchester Evening Schools, in 1911 gaining the Herbert Birley Gold Medal for Art and a scholarship of £60 a year. With this, he studied at the Slade School of Fine Art under Henry Tonks, helping him to decorate the dome at University College, paintings destroyed during World War II. During the 1920s Whaite visited many churches, making watercolour drawings for his 1929 monograph St Christopher in English Mediaeval Wallpainting; 62 of the pictures are held by the Society of Antiquaries.