Carel Weight
Carel Victor Morlais Weight | |
---|---|
Born | Hammersmith School of Art | 10 September 1908
Known for | Landscape & portrait painting |
Carel Victor Morlais Weight, CH, CBE, RA (10 September 1908 – 13 August 1997) was an English painter.[1][2]
Biography
Weight was born in
It was at Goldsmith's that Weight met his future wife, the artist Helen Roeder. They were together for 60 years before they married in 1990.[4]
During the
In 1947, Weight began teaching at the
Weight painted a number of acclaimed portraits, most notably one of Orovida Camille Pissarro, but also of less famous individuals.[10] Many of his paintings showed suburban settings in which unexpected human dramas occurred, some of them humorous and some frightening. Each painting's location was chosen specifically for its abstract structure; the locations were usually actual places, but the figures were imagined and "gr[e]w under the brush".[11] Weight wrote that his art was "concerned with such things as anger, love, hate, fear and loneliness", and said, "for me the acid test of a painting is: will the ordinary chap get anything out of this?"[11] He was prolific, and typically painted 50 paintings in a year.[12]
Weight was an instructor, mentor and good friend to John Bratby and Jean Cooke.[13][14]
Weight died on 13 August 1997 at the age of 88. Works by Weight are owned by the
David Bowie bought and owned Carel Weight's Laertes (1979) as part of his private collection.[15]
Keith Waterhouse uses the strand of sinister suburbia in Weight's work as a metaphor for the narrator's mistress in Waterhouse's 1988 novel "Our Song".[citation needed]
Awards and honours
- 1955 Associate member of the Royal Academy.[9]
- 1962 CBE
- 1965 Full member of the Royal Academy.[9]
- 1982 Edinburgh University
- 1983 Honorary Doctorate from Heriot-Watt University[16]
- 1984 Senior member of the Royal Academy.[9]
- 1995 Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour
References
- ISBN 0-19-860476-9.
- ^ "carel weight: biography". Archived from the original on 2 June 2006. Retrieved 11 June 2007.
- ^ a b Matthew Gale (August 1997). "Artist Biography: Carel Weight". Tate. Retrieved 5 April 2016.
- Independent.co.uk. 27 August 1999.
- ^ a b Imperial War Museum. "War artists archive: Carel Weight". Imperial War Museum. Retrieved 5 April 2016.
- ISBN 978-0-300-10890-3.
- ISBN 978-1-904897-66-8.
- ISBN 0297790110.
- ^ a b c d "RA Collections: Carel Weight RA". Retrieved 13 March 2015.
- )
- ^ a b Saunders, Linda (Summer 1994). 'Carel Weight', Modern Painters. 7 (2): 40–43.
- ^ Saunders, Linda (Autumn 1997). 'Obituary: Carel Weight', Modern Painters. p. 129.
- ^ "Jean Cooke". The Telegraph. Telegraph Media Group Limited. 22 August 2008. Retrieved 5 January 2014.
- ^ "Jean Cooke: Painter of wit and subtlety". The Independent. independent.co.uk. 11 August 2008. Retrieved 5 January 2014.
- ^ Mark Hudson (1 November 2016). "David Bowie's art collection is as fantastic and mercurial as the man himself - review". The Telegraph. Retrieved 16 November 2016.
- ^ "Heriot-Watt University Edinburgh: Honorary Graduates". www1.hw.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 18 April 2016. Retrieved 5 April 2016.
External links
- 183 artworks by or after Carel Weight at the Art UK site
- Works by Weight in the Tate collection.
- It Happened to Us! by Carel Weight (1941) in The Royal Air Force Museum London collection.