{{Short description|Australian artist}} {{Use dmy dates|date=June 2015}} {{Use Australian English|date=June 2015}} thumb|Percy Spence, c. 1910 '''Percy Frederick Seaton Spence''' (14 December 1868 – 3 August 1933)<ref name="adb"> {{Australian Dictionary of Biography |last=Miles |first=M.A. |year=1990 |volume=12 |id=A120038b |title=Spence, Percy Frederick Seaton (1868 - 1933) |accessdate=2010-02-14}} </ref> was an Australian artist.
Spence was born in Sydney, seventh child of English parents Francis Spence, civil servant, and his wife Hannah, ''née'' Turnbull.<ref name=adb/> Spence spent his youth in Fiji where his father held a government position.<ref name=adb/>
Spence became an illustrator to the Sydney ''Daily Telegraph'', ''Illustrated Sydney News'' and ''The Bulletin''<ref name=adb/> and also exhibited at the Royal Art Society.
In 1893 Spence made two drawings of Robert Louis Stevenson in Sydney; one is now in the National Portrait Gallery, London.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Davis |first=Joseph L. |title=The Australian Artist Percy Spence (1868–1933) |url=https://www.academia.edu/50237792 |access-date=2023-05-23 |website=Academia.edu}}</ref> Spence went to England after marrying Jessie Wright 30 January 1894; illustrations by him appeared in ''Punch'', ''Black and White'', the ''Graphic'', and other well-known publications of the time. Spence had two pictures in the Royal Academy exhibition of 1899 and his work was also accepted in the three following years. In 1901 he was responsible for the illustrations to ''Britain's Austral Empire'', mostly portraits of the leading Australian politicians of that period.
In 1905 Spence was back in Sydney and held a one-man show of his work, and in 1910 he provided 75 illustrations for the volume ''Australia'', in Black's colour series. They show Spence to have been an artist of ability and variety.
Spence died of uraemia on 3 August 1933 in Middlesex Hospital, London, after an eye operation.<ref name=adb/> Spence is represented in the National Gallery and the Mitchell library in Sydney. A pencil sketch of Phil May is in the National Portrait Gallery (London), and other portraits are at University of Sydney and at the High Court. The "H. M. Australian Fleet arriving at Sydney Heads" and a portrait of Rear-Admiral George Patey are at Buckingham Palace.<ref name=adb/>
==References== {{Reflist}} *{{Dictionary of Australian Biography|First=Percy|Last=Spence|shortlink=0-dict-biogSa-Sp.html#spence2}}
==External links== {{Commons category|Percy Spence (Australian artist)}} * {{Gutenberg author | id=31548}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Spence, Percy}} Category:1868 births Category:1933 deaths Category:19th-century Australian painters Category:19th-century Australian male artists Category:20th-century Australian painters Category:20th-century Australian male artists Category:Australian male painters Category:Artists from Sydney Category:Australian expatriates in Fiji Category:Colony of Fiji people