Explore: Henry Leonidas Rolfe

(1823 - 1881)

Henry Leonidas Rolfe, painter of fishing subjects, was a highly productive artist. He exhibited at the Royal Academy, British Institution, Royal Society of British Artists in Suffolk Street, Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts and the Royal Hibernian Academy of Arts in Dublin. Rolfe lived Holloway, North London, in 1847, but later moved to Hammersmith and then to various addresses in the City. As well as painting oil on canvas depictions, Rolfe also painted plaster casts of fish that people had caught, including at least one cast made by the pisciculturist and naturalist Francis (Frank) Trevelyan Buckland (1826-1880). Today, his works can be found at Haworth Art Gallery, Accrington, and the Fishmonger’s Company, London.