George Harcourt, Artist at Bushey from 1889 to 1947

With a name like Edeva Harcourt it was not difficult to find the family in the 1911 census, her father being the famous artist George Harcourt.

George was born in Scotland and in 1889 came to Bushey to become a student of Hubert Herkomer, and become one of the most successful pupils. In 1897 he married Mary Lascelles Lee Smith and also became Master of the preliminary classes at Herkomer's School at Bushey, where his first three children George, Mary Edeva and Elizabeth were born, and another daughter, Dorothy, being born in Arbroath, Scotland in 1907/8. He specialised in portrait and figure groups and became a Royal Academician in 1926, later becoming president of both the Royal Society of Portrait Painters and the Royal Drawing Society. He died at his home in Bushey in 1947

George Harcourt, self portrait, 1898

[National Portrait Gallery]