1856 – 1935

Born at Teffont in Wiltshire in 1856, Harry Fidler was a painter of genre and country scenes in oil.

Fidler painted in a highly distinctive style. He worked from life, applying his paint freely and liberally to produce Impressionist paintings with a chalky palette and high level of impasto.

He studied art at the Herkomer School in Bushey, which later became the School of Animal Painting, under the renowned equestrian artist, Lucy Kemp Welch. Fellow pupils included Tom Mostyn, Arnsby Brown and William Nicholson.
Herkomer claimed that he encouraged each student to persue their own unique talents, and this is illustrated by the wide variety of artistic styles that they excelled. His methods were nevertheless strongly rooted in working from life, in naturalism, with little reference to traditions or more modern intellectual theories.

Fidler exhibited at the Royal Academy, London from 1891. He also exhibited at the Royal Society of British Artists, the New English Art Club, the Royal Society for Painters in Oil, the Goupil Gallery, London and the Paris Salon.
In 1919 he married fellow artist Laura Clunas and moved to Salisbury, then Bushey, before settling in Andover where he lived until his death in 1935.