Clearing the Tree-Stumps, c.1942
Thomas Hennell was born in Ridley, Kent and studied at Regent Street Polytechnic in the early 1920s before qualifying as a teacher. In 1931 he met and befriended Eric Ravilious, Edward Bawden and other artists at Great Bardfield. He meticulously recorded vanishing country life in both his writing and art. He wrote and illustrated a book Change in the Farm in 1934, whilst he was treated for a psychiatric illness (1932-5). He frequently visited his friends in Essex and was commissioned by rural authors to illustrate their books on the changing English countryside. This fluent ink drawing was included in Farms and Fields by C.S. & C.S. Orwin, published by the National Federation of Young Farmers' Clubs in 1944.