Henry Billings (July 13, 1901 – October 1985) was an American artist. He was a painter, illustrator, muralist, and art instructor active in New York City. He was a grandson of John Shaw Billings, a surgeon and the first director of the New York Public Library.
Henry Billings | |
---|---|
Born | July 13, 1901[1] Bronxville, New York |
Died | October 1985[2] Sag Harbor, New York |
Nationality | American |
Billings attended St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire. He also studied at the Art Students League of New York, and was a member of the Art Colony of Woodstock, New York.[3]
His painting style shows an interest in the mechanical and machinery, as well as an attraction to surrealism.[4]
During the New Deal, Billings created a number of murals on commissions overseen by the Treasury Department's Section of Painting and Sculpture (later, the Section of Fine Arts). In 1936–37, he created a series of five murals depicting winter sports for the Lake Placid, New York post office.[5] He also contributed murals to post offices in Medford, Massachusetts, Wappinger Falls, New York, and Columbia, Tennessee, and a striking mural of a panther which still hangs near the ladies' powder room in Radio City Music Hall at Rockefeller Center.[1][6]
In 1945, Billings created a series of paintings for Life magazine depicting "strafing targets as they appear to the fighter pilot through the transparent rectangle of his reflector gunsight."[7]
Billings died in Sag Harbor, New York, in October 1985.