Henrik Grønvold

Henrik Grønvold (6 September 1858 – 23 March 1940) was a Danish naturalist and artist, known for his illustrations of birds. Grønvold was among the last natural history illustrators to publish lithographs.

Background Henrik Grønvold was born in Præstø, Denmark. He was the son of Hans Peter Levin Grønvold (1822–84) and Wilhelmine Marie Cathrine Lassen (1821–65). He had an early interest in natural history, and an early aptitude for natural history art. In 1880, he went to Copenhagen to learn machine drawing at the Copenhagen Technical College. After graduation, he worked first as a draughtsman of the Royal Danish Army's artillery and an illustrator at the Biological Research Station of Copenhagen.

In 1892, Grønvold left Denmark intending to emigrate to the United States. While stopping in London en route, he was employed at the Natural History Museum preparing anatomical specimens.

Career Henrik Grønvold became a skilled taxidermist, and established a reputation as an artist. He was employed at the Museum until 1895, when he accompanied William Ogilvie-Grant on an expedition to the Salvage Islands. After this expedition, Grønvold worked at the Museum in an unofficial capacity as an artist for decades, and only left London to attend an ornithological congress in Berlin. He completed 600 hand-coloured plates for twelve volumes of The Birds of Australia (1910–27) by Gregory Macalister Mathews. Grønvold subsequently provided numerous illustrations for Mathews' The Birds of Norfolk and Lord Howe Islands ... (1928) and A Supplement to The Birds of Norfolk and Lord Howe Islands ... (1936) – some of the last publications that were issued with hand-coloured plates.

Grønvold died at Bedford, England, in 1940. His daughter Elsa Ayres (1899–1985) became a skilled portrait painter and was married to British sculptor Arthur James John Ayres (1902–1985).