Harry Hawkins

Harry Hayden Hawkins (born in New Harmony, Indiana) was an artist and interior decorator, best known for his large-scale murals.

Hawkins attended the Art Institute of Chicago and was a student of John Singer Sargent. He created a mural in the Working Men's Institute Library in his home town.

After coming to Birmingham, Hawkins was commissioned in 1913 to paint the monumental proscenium mural, "The Allegory of the Muses" at the Lyric Theatre. In 1929 or 1930 he founded the interior decorating firm of Hawkins Israel Company, still operated by his granddaughters Jane Hoke and Harriet Adams in Mountain Brook and Northport.

Though he had not painted large-scale murals since the Great Depression, Hawkins did pick up his brush to create a wall painting of the Old Mill for the dining room of Britlings' "Britling By The Brook" restaurant at Mountain Brook Shopping Center in 1961.

References

• Burnet, Mary Quick (1921) Art and Artists of Indiana. New York, New York: The Century Company
• Songer, Joe (June 3, 2015) "103-year-old mural restored at the historic Lyric Theatre." The Birmingham News