Artists who met at Colchester School of Art in 1932 and married in 1938. Henry William Collins was a sculptor, painter and designer born in Colchester, Essex. After Colchester School of Art, he went on to Central School of Arts and Crafts in London. During the Second World War he served in the Royal Artillery and the Royal Engineers, and after the war, taught graphic design at St Martin’s School of Art, London, and Colchester School of Art. Joyce Millicent Collins (née Pallot) was a muralist and painter born in Brightlingsea, Essex, who studied industrial design at Colchester and Southend Schools of Art. She was a member of the Society of Industrial Artists and Designers, the Society of Chartered Designers and the Women’s International Art Club. She taught part-time in private schools, at adult education centres and in Colchester School of Art, and exhibited at the Trafford Gallery in London, The Minories in Colchester, York University, Cardiff and Ipswich.
In 1946, Henry and Joyce Collins were founding members, along with John Nash and Cedric Morris, of the Colchester Art Society, with Henry designing the society’s logo and the posters for the society’s first exhibition at Colchester Castle. One of the Collins’s earliest collaborations was a mural for the 1951 Festival of Britain’s Sea and Ships Pavilion (commissioned by the Central Office of Information). They also contributed to the Jamestown Festival, USA (1957), the Brussels Exhibition (1957–58) and Expo 1970 in Osaka, Japan. Their principal contribution to public art in the United Kingdom is their collaboration, in the 1970s, on the design and execution of over 30 large-scale murals, in concrete and in mosaic. A guiding principle for each mural was that its subject matter had to be relevant to its location, with Joyce conducting historical research and Henry taking the lead in its design. The couple varied the surface textures of the murals not only to add visual interest but also to discourage graffiti, and all were created in collaboration with Hutton Builders, of Birch, Colchester, specialists in the use of decorative concrete. The Collins’s first concrete mural was commissioned by Stanley Bragg Architects for the façade of a new Sainsbury’s store in Colchester town centre (1969). More commissions for Sainsbury’s followed: at Hitchin, Hertfordshire (1972); Bexhill-on-Sea, East Sussex (1976; restored 2024); Southampton, Hampshire (1978; relocated in 1990 to Hamtun Street); Gloucester; and Surbiton, southwest London (1980). They also created murals for various branches of British Home Stores: at Colchester (1976; restored by Firstsite and relocated to Fifteen Queen Street, a community arts centre, in 2012); Northumberland Road, Newcastle; Stockport, Greater Manchester (1978); and Harlow, Essex (1982). In 1972–74, they produced murals for Colchester’s four Southway subways: at Maldon Road/Lexden Road (‘Crouched Friars’); Head Street/Butt Road (‘Dr William Gilberd’); Abbeygate Street/St Johns Green (‘Colonia’); and St Botolph’s Circus (‘Eudo’). The subway murals were restored in 2017 by Colchester Civic Society and Colchester in Bloom, supported by a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund. Henry and Joyce Collins had joint retrospective exhibitions at The Minories in Colchester in 1984 and 1995.
Bibliography: D. Buckman, Artists in Britain since 1945 (2 vols: A–L, M–Z), Bristol, 2006; Colchester Art Society: (i) Henry Collins, (ii) Joyce Pallot; Henry and Joyce Collins website; F. Lloyd et al, Public Sculpture of Outer South and West London, Liverpool, 2011, p. 166; J. Seddon et al, Public Sculpture of Sussex, Liverpool, 2014, pp. 5–6; Wikipedia: ‘Henry and Joyce Collins’; T. Wyke, Public Sculpture of Greater Manchester, Liverpool, 2004, pp. 337, 343–44.
Terry Cavanagh, June 2025
Henry and Joyce Collins standing in front of the large concrete mural outside the Sainsbury’s store in Colchester town centre, 1969. Photograph by Keith Mirams
(courtesy of the Sainsbury Archive)
