PROFESSOR CAREL WEIGHT C.H., C.B.E., R.A., R.B.A., Hon.
R.W.S.
(1908 – 1997)
“Grantley Hall”
Oil Painting on canvas. 14” x 20”. Signed & titled on
label on reverse IMAGE
Carel Weight was born in
Paddington in 1908 of German and Swedish descent. He was a unique painter of strange dramas in
which unusual events get transplanted to suburbia. He also painted portraits including Orivida
Pissarro of which one is in the Tate Gallery and one in the Ashmolean
Museum, Oxford. He studied at the
Hammersmith School of Art from 1928 to 1930 and Goldsmith’s College School of
Art from 1930 to 1933. At Goldsmith’s he
met his life-long partner Helen Roeder, and they were married in 1990. Weight had many friends including the
painters Edward Bawden and John Nash (with whom he would go on painting
holidays). Also Julian Trevelyan, Mary Fedden, Stanley Spencer and L.S.
Lowry. His first solo exhibition was
held at the Cooling Gallery in 1933 and he later exhibited in some major London
Galleries, including the Royal Academy, to which he was elected Member in 1965. He also exhibited at the Leicester Galleries,
the London Group and the Royal Society of British Artists, of which he was a
Member. During the Second World War he
served with the Royal Engineers and Army Education Corps. As an Official War Artist in 1945 he worked
in Austria, Greece and Italy. In 1947 he began
teaching at the Royal College of Art and was Professor of Painting there from
1957 to 1973, where he was regarded with affection by his many students, one of
whom was David Hockney. In 1951 he
painted a mural for the Festival of Britain’s Country Pavilion and another for
Manchester Cathedral in 1963. He was
appointed a CBE in 1962 and awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Edinburgh
University in 1982. He was
made Companion of Honour in the 1995 New Year’s Honours List. Retrospective exhibitions were held at the Royal Academy in 1982, Newport
Museum and Art Gallery in 1993 and Bankside Gallery in 2000. His work is in the collections of the Tate
Gallery, the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford and the Victoria and Albert
Museum. He died on 13th August
1997 at the age of 88.
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