Ernest Townsend

Ernest Townsend (1 January 1880 – 22 January 1944) was a British portraitist from Derby.

Townsend studied at Derby College of Art, Heatherleys in Chelsea and the Royal Academy. Among his works were a 1915 portrait of the Right Hon. Winston Churchill when he was First Lord of the Admiralty. This picture now hangs in the National Liberal Club in London.

Townsend was commissioned to create a design for the roofs of the Rolls-Royce aircraft engine factories in Derby so that they would appear to German bombers to be no more than a village. Townsend exhibited 15 paintings at the academy between 1910 and 1937, as shown below.

As an impecunious art student, he lived with his brother, William George Paulson Townsend, who had become Design Master at the Royal School of Needlework and was an author and editor of various art publications. Ernest supplemented his income with design work for these magazines, in particular for The Art Workers' Quarterly, of which his brother was founder and editor.

In 1904 he won the Royal Academy's Landseer Scholarship for figure painting and in 1905 he won the academy's Creswick Prize for 'Willows and Weeds', a painting donated by his family after his death to the Derby Art Gallery.

Return to Derby In 1907, he left London. After some time in Paris and the Netherlands, he returned to Derby, where he had a studio in Full Street, living in nearby Coxbench. In 1912, Townsend, like his friends, Alfred Munnings and Laura Knight, represented Great Britain in the Olympic Games in Stockholm by entering a painting in the Olympic Art exhibition.

At the age of 25, Townsend was commissioned to paint his former headmaster at the School of Art, T.C. Simmonds. This painting was later accepted by the Royal Academy for its 1910 Summer Exhibition. Perhaps it was this success that led to another commission from the Town for a portrait of the Libraries Museum and Art Gallery Director, William Crowther, upon his retirement in 1911. Many more "official" commissions were to come from the Town for the remainder of Townsend's life; a succession of mayoral portraits

Portrait of Winston Churchill Townsend's 1915 portrait of the Right Hon. Winston Churchill when he was First Lord of the Admiralty was commissioned anonymously. This picture now hangs in the National Liberal Club in London, but it was not hung until 1944. Churchill had been unavailable to unveil it in 1915, and when he was available, he was no longer popular in the Liberal Club. The portrait was mothballed and retrieved for public viewing only following Churchill's success in 1944, when he was belatedly asked to unveil it. Townsend married Doris Campbell on 30 December 1912 at St James' Church in Clapham. Townsend'd 1917 picture titled Summer Morning Interior has his wife as the main character.

World War II When Townsend died in 1944, some said it was due to overwork. He had been busy during the war creating designs that could be used to camouflage Rolls-Royce's aircraft engine factories in Derby. These factories built the Merlin engines that powered the Spitfire and Hurricane fighters. Using his skills, he made the factory appear from the air to be no more than a village. There is a permanent display of reproductions of many of his works in the Standing Order public house in Derby. In addition there are sixty paintings in public collections in the United Kingdom.

In February 2024, the Mayor of Derby Alan Graves announced that Derby City Council planned to rename its council chamber after Townsend, saying that "it can be argued that he saved Great Britain with his artistic abilities."

Major works

Exeter Bridge, Derby Derby Fish Market by Night Winston Churchill, 1915 Scene in Market Place during Gun Week, 18 to 23 November 1918 A Glimpse of Derby Market Place on Carnival Day, 1926 Hospital Carnival Day, 1935

Exhibits at the Royal Academy Ernest Townsend Exhibits at the Royal Academy 1910 - 1937

1910 T C Simmonds Esq 1913 Arthur Smith Esq 1915 "And battle, death and destiny roll-on, while loving hearts beat anxiously at home." 1916 A Native of Derbyshire & The Studio Doorway 1917 The Attic Stairs & A Derbyshire Cottage 1918 Gossip & Summer Morning 1919 The Balloon Man 1927 A Balloon Shop 1932 Hanna 1933 Schoolboy's Holiday 1934 T Harrision Thorpe Esq 1937 Carnival Day in Derby