John Stanton Ward

John Stanton Ward

British royalty

and celebrities.

Life and work

Ward was born in Hereford, where his father, Russell Stanton Ward, ran an antiques shop and restored paintings. He was the youngest in a family of seven children, living in a flat above the shop. His father died when he was young. He was educated at St Owen's School in Hereford, and then from 1932 to 1936 at the small Hereford School of Arts and Crafts. With financial support from the Principal, Sir William Rothenstein, he won a place at the Royal College of Art in London in 1936, where he studied under Gilbert Spencer, Barnett Freedman, Percy Horton, Charles Mahoney and Alan Sorrell, winning the prize for drawing.

He served in the

Second World War from 1939, and used his drawing skills to design pillboxes in Kent. He was posted to Belgium after the war, where he met his future wife Alison Williams in Ghent

. He was demobbed in 1946, and returned to the Royal College of Art for one year, winning its travelling scholarship in 1947.

He drew illustrations for guides to Herefordshire and North Yorkshire. Finding that a Hereford art school colleague was now art editor at Vogue, he obtained commissions to draw illustrations for the magazine from 1948 to 1952. He married Alison in 1950, and moved to Bilting Court - a Tudor house near Ashford, Kent - in 1954.

He taught at

National Portrait Gallery

.

He became an associate of the

Sensation exhibition. He never rejoined. He was also a member of the Royal Watercolour Society, the Royal Society of Portrait Painters (Vice-President from 1980 to 1985) and the New English Art Club. He received an honorary doctorate from University of Kent in 1982, and was appointed CBE

in 1985.

Ward's work was exhibited in Tenterden in 1989, jointly with Ernest Greenwood and Ken Howard.^[1]

He died in Bilting, Kent, and was survived by his wife, their four sons and two daughters. His daughter, Celia Ward, is also a painter, as is his son Toby.

References

^ Fenwick, Simon (3 September 2009). "Ernest Greenwood: Artist and administrator whose efforts revived the fortunes of the Royal Watercolour Society". The Independent. Archived from the original on 13 June 2022. Retrieved 22 November 2016.

Obituary (The Independent, 16 June 2007)
Obituary (The Daily Telegraph, 18 June 2007)
Obituary (The Guardian, 21 June 2007)
Obituary (The Times, 21 June 2007)

External links

48 artworks by or after John Stanton Ward at the Art UK site
J. S. Ward on Artnet
Paintings by J. S. Ward (Bridgeman Art Library)
J S Ward (National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London)
Portraits at the
National Portrait Gallery

[indyobit-1] Fenwick, Simon (3 September 2009). "Ernest Greenwood: Artist and administrator whose efforts revived the fortunes of the Royal Watercolour Society". The Independent. Archived from the original on 13 June 2022. Retrieved 22 November 2016.

[1]

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