Description
Albert Henry Fullwood (15 March 1863 – 1 October 1930) was the Australian official war artist to the 5th Division in the First World War.
Fullwood was born in Hockley, Birmingham, son of Frederick John Fullwood, jeweller, and his wife Emma, née Barr. From 1878, Fullwood studied art at evening classes at the Birmingham Institute. He studied art at the Birmingham School of Landscape Art at the Birmingham YMCA, Needless Alley, Birmingham. After graduation, he migrated to Sydney in 1883 and obtained work at John Sands Limited as a lithographic draughtsman and designer. He joined the Art Society of New South Wales in 1884, and shortly afterwards obtained a position on the staff of the Picturesque Atlas of Australia, for which he traveled a good deal in the north and did many drawings. He later worked on The Sydney Mail and other illustrated papers of the time. He kept up his painting, and in 1892 two of his water-colours were purchased for the national gallery at Sydney.
In 1895 Fullwood took a leading part in forming the Society of Artists in Sydney and was a member of its first council. He returned to Europe in 1900 by way of America, holding on the way a very successful exhibition of his work in New York City. Making London his headquarters, Fullwood exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1901, 1904, and later years, and also at various exhibitions in Europe. Soon after World War I started, Fullwood joined the Allied Art Corps; later he was a sergeant in the Royal Army Medical Corps based at the 3rd London General Hospital, Wandsworth, and later an Australian official war artist. He returned to Sydney in 1920 and worked chiefly in water-colour and etching. Fullwood was a co-founder, with John Shirlow, of the Australian Painter-Etchers’ Society.
Fullwood is represented in the national galleries at Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide, at Dresden and Budapest, and in the Australian War Memorial at Canberra.
He married Clyda Blanche Newman, daughter of photographer John Hubert Newman, on 13 October 1896 in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. He had two sons, Philip L. Fullwood and Geoffrey Barr Fullwood, and a daughter Marjorie Clyda. Both Philip and Marjorie pre-deceased him.