AustLit

French-Australian artist Lucien Henry was active in Sydney in the late 1800s. In the years preceding Federation, Henry designed distinctive Australian images for public buildings and monuments.

Henry studied art in his native Paris, and was exiled to the French penal colony of New Caledonia for six years for his political activism. In 1879, after a political amnesty was declared, Henry arrived in Sydney in 1879. There he married the widowed Juliette Lopes (nee Lebeau). In 1883, Henry became the first art lecturer at Sydney Technical College. He also taught privately, was a founder of the Art Society of New South Wales, and had a long-reaching influence on later generations of artists. He returned to France in 1891.