Henry Bright, was a distinguished English landscape painter associated with the Norwich School of painters.
Henry Bright was born on 5 June 1810 in Saxmundham, Suffolk, the third son of some nine children of Jerome Bright (1770–1846), a clockmaker, and Susannah Denny, of Alburgh in Norfolk, who were married on 28 June 1790. Jerome and Susannah Bright attended services in the Congregational chapel at Rendham, a few miles from Saxmundham.
Bright was apprenticed by his family to a chemist in Woodbridge, Suffolk, but was then transferred to a Norwich chemist, Paul Squires. During this apprenticeship, or perhaps afterwards, he became a dispenser at the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital. During this period he is said to have spent all his free time sketching.
His obvious artistic talents were finally recognised and he became a pupil of Alfred Stannard. He is also said to have been trained by John Berney Crome and John Sell Cotman, both of whom were members of the Norwich Society of Artists.
About 1833 Bright returned to Saxmundham to marry a local girl, Eliza Brightley, on 8 May. Two of their children are known to have survived into adulthood. Bright moved with his family to Paddington in 1836. In 1848, the year they moved to Ealing, his wife Eliza died.
By 1854, Bright was living in St John's Wood, but left London in 1858 because of health reasons and settled with his daughters in his brother's house in Saxmundham. Bright continued to visit London for business reasons and to view exhibitions. From 1860, he lived at Redhill in Surrey. He also spent some time in Maidstone.
He died in Ipswich in 1873.