WILFRED FAIRCLOUGH R.E.,
R.W.S. (1907 – 1996)
“Newark Mill, Ripley” Oil Painting on Board. 17” x 24” (432mm x
610mm).
Signed
and dated 1952. Titled on Artist’s label
on reverse.
Provenance
– Exhibited Agnews, Bond Street, London 1953.
Exhibition
of “Six Young Artists”.
IMAGE
Wilfred Fairclough was a painter, etcher, watercolourist and
teacher who was born in Blackburn, Lancashire. He was the husband of
the painter Joan Vernon-Cryer and father of the artist Michael Fairclough. He left school at 14 to work in a mill and
then trained as an audit clerk while attending evening classes at Blackburn
School of Arts and Crafts, where he passed the Board of Education’s drawing
examination in 1930, the year he was appointed part-time teacher at Blackburn. Determination gained him entry to the Royal
College of Art’s engraving school from 1931 to 1934, where he excelled, under
teachers Malcolm Osborne and Robert Austin.
He was a Rome Scholar in Engraving in 1934 attending the British School in Rome from 1934 to 1937. Rome was a favourite subject,
later replaced by Venice. He
lived at Kingston upon Thames and joined the staff of
Kingston School of Art in 1938 and was Principal there from 1962 to 1970, after
which he was Assistant Director of
Kingston Polytechnic from 1970 to 1972. He spent his wartime service in the Royal
Air Force where he worked on models employed in planning the bouncing bomb
attack on the Mohne dam. He then spent time in India. Fairclough was elected member of the Royal
Society of Painter Etchers and Engravers in 1946 and member of the Royal Society
of Painters in Watercolours in 1968. He
also exhibited at the Royal Academy, the Royal Scottish Academy, the Royal
Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts, Walker Art Gallery Liverpool and at the
Redfern Gallery, as well as widely overseas.
The Contemporary Art Society has bought his work and he is also
represented at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and the Victoria and Albert Museum, which has almost 60
watercolours which Fairclough completed during World War II for the Pilgrim
Trust’s Recording Britain project.
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