James Henry Govier
National Portrait Gallery, London.
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| James Henry Govier |
James Henry Govier was born in 1910 in Oakley,
Buckinghamshire. He was the only son of
Henry Govier and Mary Ann Measey. At the time of the 1911 Census, the Govier
family were residing at Oakley nr. Brill Thame.
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| 1911 Census |
Henry, 32, was employed as Farm Labourer Carter on
Farm. Mary Ann was 27. They were married two years earlier.
Their children were Elizabeth, 2, and James Henry aged 8
months old.
In 1914 the family moved to the small town
of Gorseinon on the Gower coast in South Wales, where James was
educated at the local school.
During the 1921 Census, the family had moved to 20 Dyffryn Place, Gorseinon.
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| 1921 Census |
Henry, 43, was employed as a Haulier in the Fairwood Tinplate Works, Gowerton. Mary Ann was 36.
Their children were Elizabeth Nellie, 12; Jame Henry, 10,
and Florence Lucy, 8.
At fourteen, he left school to work in one of the local tin
works. At seventeen, he became an evening student at the Swansea Art School.
James was taken to see Grant Murray, the head of Art at the famous Swansea
Art School, and at the age of twenty gained the Glamorgan County Scholarship to
study full-time at Swansea Art School.
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| The South Wales Daily Post |
From 1935 James studied at the Royal College of Art under the tutorship of Malcolm Osborne, RA, RE. At this time, he became acquainted with the poet Dylan Thomas and worked with other Welsh artists in London. In 1938 he gained his ARCA along with the Art Travelling Scholarship, which he was unable to take up because of the outbreak of war. From 1938 he worked as Malcolm Osborne’s assistant at the Royal College and helped Robert Austin from 1940-1942.
At the time of the 1939 Register, James was living at 46 Abbey Road, Aylesbury. James’ occupation was recorded as Student at Royal College London. Following this
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| 1939 Register |
In August 1940 he joined the Royal Engineers constructing gun emplacements and in the development of chemical warfare. In 1942 by order of the Air Ministry he was transferred to the Royal Air Force model-making section for North Africa and Italy, producing models for the Dambuster raids, the D-Day landings and objectives in Africa and Italy.
James was demobilised in 1945 and started to exhibit with the Aylesbury and District Art Society, becoming an acquaintance of the Society’s patron Augustus John. In 1947 he became an Art Master at Eye Grammar School in Suffolk and resided in Eye until his marriage in 1950. In 1950 he married Freda Muriel Tye of Hoxne, a student at Ipswich Art School specialising as a commercial display artist. The couple started married life in Hoxne and moved to ‘The Retreat’, a large, thatched house in Hoxne in 1957. James continued to exhibit with the Aylesbury Art Society and Ipswich Art Club.
In 1965 the Eye Grammar School closed and James moved to Diss Grammar School until his early retirement in 1972. James continued to produce oils and watercolours of East Anglia, including many genre subjects.
James Henry Govier died on December 21, 1974, leaving behind him a large variety of works from small, delicate pencil drawings and etchings to vibrant oils and translucent watercolours. Some of his canvasses are almost impressionistic in style, capturing the quality of the chiaroscuro he so frequently used.
James Henry Govier’s works can be seen at The National Museum of Wales; National Library of Wales; The Glynn Vivian Art Gallery / Swansea Art Gallery; Swansea Art Society; The British Museum; Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; Christchurch Mansion, Ipswich; Norwich Castle Museum and Buckinghamshire County Museum
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