Horsham art – Edward Bainbridge Copnall

Horsham Museum is, of course, an Art Gallery as well! In recent years it has been delighted to give space to some of the best current artists from across Sussex.

However, it also has several paintings hanging on walls and in the archives by artists from the past. Some are of local scenes, while others are of other parts of the UK and there are also portraits and sketches.

The Friends of Horsham Museum & Art Gallery have helped acquire a number of these works.

For 2026 we will look at some of them and, where applicable, the person behind their creation.

We start with a portrait by Edward Bainbridge Copnall who was born in South Africa in 1903 but moved to Horsham as a young child after the death of his mother.

His father, a photographer, lived and worked in the town while his uncle was a Liverpool-based painter.

Edward was a camouflage officer in the Middle East during World War II, helping to build dummy weaponry in order to confuse the enemy.

He became President of the Royal Society of Sculptors and died in 1973, aged 70, in Kent.

His work included this featured 1926 portrait, along with Whither, a large allegorical scene of a funeral in a graveyard in Horsham (1925) which hangs in the Museum, and the large crucifixion in the Museum garden, made of coal dust and resin (1963).