Artist Obituaries

Trevor Stubley RP
(1932 – 2010, aged 77)

Trevor Stubley

A great big barrel of a Yorkshire man, Trevor, made an Honorary Member in 2003, served the Society well as its Vice President from 1994 to 1999.

Impressed by his great common sense, very forthrightly expressed at our AGMs, I diffidently asked him to stand for election alongside me, only too aware that the time and distance involved may in fact have continued to keep our hierarchy Londoncentric. “But I ‘ate Southerners!” he said. Never have I been so glad that my parents were in York for my birth. In the event, Trevor gained more votes for his position than I did for mine (for which he was touchingly and modestly surprised and grateful), and proved a staunch support. He would often drive down the A1 for the frequent meetings in his trusty transit van, in which he would spend the night, parked in some back street. For many years that same van provided a mobile studio for Trevor and his wife Valerie during their annual month abroad. Within weeks of their return, the rich harvest of his sunny watercolours, efficiently framed and photographed for the invitation cards, would fill the walls of his eponymous gallery in Holmfirth.

Trevor was a prodigious producer of work. Besides 500 commissioned portraits, which included H.M. The Queen, he illustrated some 400 children’s books. That expertise he put to generous use in the improvement of our catalogue, bringing it into full colour for the first time and helping to make very substantial savings on its cost. Sometimes the conflicting attractions of his beloved Yorkshire and the RP proved problematic. Determined to support the annual dinner he once dutifully turned up in full fig, with Valerie at his side resplendent in gold lamé. Hardly were they seated at the top table than they rose to catch the last train to Huddersfield in order to honour a teaching commitment of Valerie’s the following morning, leaving some of our honoured guests…including Max Hastings, I think, dumbfounded.

Sadly, this hectic pace of life took its toll and Trevor suffered a stroke shortly before completing his six year term of office. He reduced his portrait work but continued to exhibit frequently in the North. I attended a delightful retrospective of his at Upper Mill. Having lost my way in the dark and the rain round Manchester, I missed the private view and was given a typically generous welcome the following day with the added advantage of also visiting his Holmfirth gallery, which was featuring the lyrical works from imagination, freed from commission constraints, upon which he began to concentrate. When Valerie died last year, the light went out.

We shared the same birthday, so never forgot. Now, no new colourful Stubley card will arrive. We will all miss him.

Daphne Todd OBE, PPRP, NEAC

Link to Trevor Stubley's obituary in the Yorkshire Post

Link to Trevor Stubley's obituary in the Huddersfield Examiner

Claude Harrison RP
(1922 – 2009, aged 87)

Claude Harrison’s paintings evoke a world both mysterious and familiar. In his portait work the finely painted subject is set against an equally well worked landscape, often of no relevance to the sitter. These paintings create simultaneously an 18th- and 20th-century impression. The sitters themselves, often children and young women, seem remote from the artist, caught perhaps in a distant, unreachable reverie...

Link to Claude Harrison's obituary in the Times

MICHAEL REYNOLDS, RP, RBA, Rome Scholar
(1933 - 2008, aged 74)

Self Portrait, Michael Reynolds

For many years a greatly-admired Member of this Society, Michael Reynolds was a painter of blazing integrity. He had a remarkable grasp of the great interweaving movements in the history of painting and drawing, and a wonderfully thorough technical knowledge. His work is in important collections, including the National Portrait Gallery and the Royal Collection, and he helped initiate The Discerning Eye open competition.

A gifted draughtsman and a painter of admirable quality, who worked to the highest standards and was never superficial, he believed that many recent movements in art were meretricious, and that almost all the great organisations that make up the present art Establishment had sold out to fallacious vacuities which encouraged theories that had no real content. This may appear to some as a reactionary stance, but he was a man of great liveliness of mind. He was sometimes irascible, and although I almost always rather enjoyed that aspect of his personality it certainly offended some people.

Though not personally ambitious, towards the end of his life he felt under-appreciated in this country. It was partly because of this, and partly because of his health, that he decided to spend his final years in Italy and Holland.

His wife, from whom he was separated, died before he did. His four daughters survive him.

Michael Noakes RP

Link to an Article in the Times Online about Michael Reynolds

JOHN WARD, CBE, RP, NEAC, Hon. PS
(1917 – 2007)

Self Portrait, John Ward

“He was a LOVELY man: is invariably the initial response of anyone you ask who knew him.  And he was, civilised, genteel, kind and enormously generous with his encouragement of those of us following in his wake.  He must have spent time every morning writing in his spidery hand to former students and acolytes: words of wisdom, stressing the sheer joy of painting and how lucky we are; words of praise for something of theirs seen on his travels, “You are painting so well, I am glad.  It encourages me to try harder!” and similarly self-deprecating small confidences about the difficulty of achieving financial success, just in case others were downcast about their own exhibitions.  In the febrile world of dog eat artistic dog this appeared almost saintly.

Quietly - spoken John may have been, but as his core was a steely determination.  On more than one occasion I have witnessed him dominate a prize-giving panel.  He would make up his mind at the start then sit and wait through the hours of argy-bargy until the other equally distinguished members of the panel came round to his way of thinking.  That they did so quite genuinely, proved the validity of his judgement; that the winners espoused a style of painting not dissimilar to his own was perhaps testament to his teaching and influence.

He stood for beauty.  When, during the row about the notorious Sensation exhibition, John was gratuitously insulted by the Secretary of the Royal Academy who declared that there was no point to art that did not change the world, he resigned, and, unlike three of his colleagues, he refused to go back.  We at the RP have been enormously privileged to have both him and his lovely portraits amongst us.

P.S. Visit Challock Church in Kent, full of his murals from 1956 and from 1999.  A perfect place …. you will see.

Daphne Todd OBE, PPRP, NEAC, Hon. SWA

Link to John Ward's obituary in the Independent

Link to John Ward's obituary in the Telegraph

Link to John Ward's obituary in the Times

Link to John Ward's obituary in the Guardian

Edwin Greenman RP
(1909 – 2003)

Edwin Greenman, painter and teacher: born Beckenham, Kent 21 March 1909; Principal, Sir John Cass School of Art 1951-69; RP 1968; married 1942 Freda Johns (one son); died Epsom, Surrey 19 March 2003. For full obituary..

Link to Edwin Greenman's obituary in the Independent