Francis Helps
English painter and draftsman (1890–1972)
Francis William Helps (1890-1972) was a British artist who, besides a long career as an art teacher, served as the official artist to the 1924 British expedition to Everest.
Biography
Helps was born in Dulwich in London and, between 1903 and 1907, he attended Dulwich College while also receiving art lessons from a private tutor. In 1908, he enrolled at the Slade School of Fine Art in London. During World War I, Helps joined the Artists' Rifles and saw active service in France. Helps joined the 1924 British Mount Everest expedition as an official artist. He completed some eighty paintings and drawings of the expedition members and the Himalayan landscape which were subsequently displayed at the Alpine Club in London.
Helps took a full-time teaching post at the Royal College of Art, RCA, in 1931. In 1933, he was elected a member of the Royal Society of British Artists. He also exhibited at the Royal Academy. He left the RCA in 1934 but rejoined their teaching staff during World War II while the college was relocated to the Lake District.
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This entry incorporates text from “Francis Helps” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.