Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 2.djvu/261

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Henderson
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Henderson

tioned in the despatch of 31 March, and was made C.B. on 29 Nov.

He was placed on the staff of the war office on 29 Aug. 1900 as an assistant adjutant-general, to write the history of the war; but he was employed first on revision of the infantry drill-book. In the autumn of 1901 he went to South Africa to examine the battlefields, but he worked too hard and broke down again. He returned to England in February 1902, and at the end of that year he was sent to Egypt for the winter. He died at Assouan on 5 March 1903, and was buried in the Roman catholic cemetery at Cairo, where there is a memorial to him. In 1883 he married Mary, daughter of Pierce Joyce of Galway, who survived him. She received a civil list pension of 100l. in 1904. They had no children.

Henderson had rare gifts as a military historian. He meant the history of the South African war to be a great picture, not a cold catalogue of facts. He had completed the first volume, on the antecedents of the war; but after his death it was decided that the history should be confined to the military contest, and what he wrote was not published.

The following articles in the 'Edinburgh Review' were Henderson's:

  1. 'The American Civil War,' April 1891.
  2. 'Clarke's Fortification,' October 1891.
  3. 'Von Moltke's Campaign in Bohemia,' April 1894.
  4. 'Lord Wolseley's "Marlborough,"' October 1894.
  5. 'Army Organisation,' January 1896.
  6. 'National Defence,' April 1897.
  7. 'The War in South Africa,' January 1900.

He published a translation of Verdy du Vemois' study of the battle of Custozza in 1894, and an original study of the battle of Worth in 1899. He wrote a preface to Count Sternberg's 'Experiences of the Boer War' (1901) in which he dealt with foreign criticism; and he contributed articles on war, strategy and tactics to the 'Encyclopædia Britannica' (10th edit.). He also wrote in 'The Times' on manoeuvres. He was a frequent lecturer at the United Service Institution and before the military societies of Aldershot and Ireland. Some of these lectures have been reprinted with other of his papers in 'The Science of War,' 1905, with a prefatory memoir by Lord Roberts, who writes of Henderson's 'most fascinating personality,' his gifts as a lecturer and a writer, and his value as a staff officer.

[In addition to the above memoir. The Times, 7 March 1903; Spectator, 14 March 1903; the Leodiensian (school journal), April 1903; private information.]

E. M. L.

HENDERSON, JOSEPH (1832–1908), portrait and marine painter, born on 10 June 1832 at Stanley, Perthshire, was the third son—he had a younger twin brother—of a stone-carver, Joseph Henderson, by his wife, Marjory Slater. The family removing to Edinburgh, the father died there about 1840 in poor circumstances, and the four boys were sent to business at a very early age. Joseph was apprenticed to a firm of drapers in George Street, but he was allowed time to attend the classes of the Trustees' Academy in the mornings and evenings. On the recommendation of Alexander Handyside Ritchie [q. v.], sculptor, he was enrolled a student on 2 Feb. 1849. William Quiller Orchardson [q. v. Suppl. II] and Robert Herdman [q. v.] were fellow students. He left the academy on 10 May 1853, about a year after Robert Scott Lauder [q. v.] was appointed headmaster, and settled in Glasgow. From 1852 onward, Henderson supported himself entirely by his art. His early work bears the impress of the earlier Scottish tradition, as modified by Duncan and Thomas Faed [q. v. Suppl. I], rather than that of Lauder and his pupils, although evidences of Lauder's suggestion appear in Henderson's genre pictures such as 'The Ballad' (1858) and 'The Sick Child ' (1860). After spending some twenty years chiefly on pictures of that kind, Henderson, during a holiday on the Ayrshire coast about 1871, discovered that his real bent was sea-painting. Although he continued to paint portraits, he paid chief attention to the sea. At first figure incidents of considerable importance were usually introduced, and his colour inclined to be black and his handling hard; but gradually the figures became accessory to the effect, his colour gained in freshness and his brush work in freedom. His best work was done during the last fifteen years of his life. While his principal pictures were in oils, he painted in water-colour also, and was a member of the Royal Scottish Water-Colour Society. In celebration of his jubilee as a professional artist the Glasgow Art Club, besides entertaining him to dinner and presenting him with a souvenir, organised a special exhibition of his work (1901), and after his death the Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts, of which he was a vice-president, arranged a memorial exhibition. Between 1871 and 1886 he exhibited twenty pictures at the Royal Academy, but his chief pictures were usually shown at the