H. M. Brock

Who was H. M. Brock?

Henry Matthew Brock was a British illustrator and landscape painter of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

Born in Cambridge in England, H. M. Brock was one of four sons of Edmund Brock, a specialist reader in oriental languages for the Cambridge University Press, and his wife Mary Ann Louise. H. M. Brock was the younger brother of the better-known artist Charles Edward Brock, with whom he shared a studio from 1894. H. M. Brock studied at the Cambridge School of Art. Like his brother, he contributed to Punch magazine. While Charles Edward Brock painted in oils and was elected a member of the British Institution, H. M. Brock worked in advertising as well as in book illustration. For example, he illustrated Charles Dickens' Great Expectations, and produced four colour plates for a 1935 edition of A Christmas Carol. In addition, Brock was one of seven artists who contributed illustrations to Arthur Conan Doyle's 1909 Sherlock Holmes story His Last Bow.

Most of Brock's illustrations were for classic Victorian and Edwardian fiction. He also did a great deal of work for the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company for whom he produced posters and other advertising materials. During his artistic career, H. M. Brock regularly exhibited his drawings and watercolours at the Royal Academy and the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool. He became a full member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours in 1907.