Hugh Percy Heard

1866 - 1940

Hugh Percy Heard was a landscape artist who painted mostly in watercolour. He was the son of a merchant trader in the Baltic trading market, brother to the artist Nathaniel Heard (b. 1872) and born in Bideford, Devon. He took up art from an early age, later moving to Swansea and London. He ran the Westward Ho! Art Club and became head of the Bideford School of Art. Hugh Percy Heard exhibited at the RBA (Royal Society of British Artists), LA (Liverpool Academy), DG (Dudley Gallery) and the RA (Royal Academy). He visited Paris with George Belcher (English cartoonist, etcher and painter of genre, sporting subjects and still life, who did work for Punch, Tatler and Vanity Fair) returning to Devon in 1911. He is best known for his marine and coastal scenes but is known to have hated the sea. Ironically he was drowned by falling off a bus on Bideford Quay and into the estuary.

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