Richard Howard Penton

Richard Penton was born in 1882, an only child, in Barrow-in-Furness, where his father, Richard Rich Penton, worked for the local Furness Railway Company as a draughtsman and Assistant to the Carriage Superintendent and taught art at the local Art school in Dalton.

In 1900 he sketched the very discreet launch of the "Mikasa", the Japanese flagship built by Vickers in Barrow, and had his drawing published in the London Daily Graphic.

[1] Richard Penton served in WW1 in the Sherwood Foresters, surviving the war, and emerging as a Lieutenant (Brevet Captain) in 1919.

He went on to become a noted marine and landscape painter, a founder member of the Langham Sketching Club and the Wapping Group of Artists.

[2] The London Metropolitan Archives owns the Penton Collection, comprising 130 pencil drawings.