Percy Horton
Percy Horton | |
---|---|
Born | 1897 Brighton, England |
Died | 1970 |
Education | Brighton School of Art Royal College of Art |
Known for | painting, drawing |
Percy Frederick Horton MA,
Early life
Horton was one of three brothers born into a working-class family in Brighton; his father, Percy Horton, was a bus conductor and his mother, Ellen (née Marman), had worked
Conscientious objection
Horton had become a socialist and a member of the
After the First World War
After the war he returned to Brighton. From 1919 to 1920 he studied at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, London, under Archibald Standish Hartrick and Francis Ernest Jackson. Hartrick taught Horton a drawing method that emphasised rhythmic outline – previously introduced to English art school education by the late Slade professor Alphonse Legros – and this stress on quality of line when drawing the life model became a major influence on Horton's future work.[3]
Upon leaving the Central School, Horton became an art teacher at Rugby School. He resigned from Rugby in 1922 to continue his art studies at the Royal College of Art (RCA), then under the auspices of the new principal William Rothenstein, where he was awarded a solo Royal Exhibition and passed the Department of Education Examination in Painting with distinction. He was also awarded the ARCA Diploma with Distinction in Painting, and the RCA Drawing Prize for 1924. His contemporaries at the college included Henry Moore, Edward Bawden and Eric Ravilious.
Upon leaving the RCA he became the Drawing Master at Bishop's Stortford College, a position he held until 1930. This became the beginning of a lifetime of teaching. In 1930 he was invited by William Rothenstein to join the staff at the RCA, where he remained for 19 years, to instruct in its Painting School. He also joined The Working Men's College[5] as a teacher of art under its new Director of Art Classes, James Laver, having been recommended by Rothenstein. Horton had begun to teach at The Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art at Oxford in 1933, but when the RCA relocated to Ambleside during Second World War he found travel between Ambleside and Oxford difficult; consequently he resigned from Ruskin. After the War the RCA returned to London but the transition for the college was problematic and confused, with a lack of equipment and changes in teaching staff. Horton retained his post although tenure was uncertain. However, in 1949 he was appointed the Master of Drawing at Ruskin where his students included R. B. Kitaj, who remembered him fondly as having 'really turned me on to Cézanne as well as insisting on regular life drawing'[6] and John Updike.[3][7]
Also during World War II, Horton received a number of short-term commissions from the War Artists' Advisory Committee to paint portraits of civil defense staff and civilian factory workers.[8] Possibly the most notable of these is his depiction of blind workers in a Birmingham factory.[9][4]
In 1947 he, with Paul Hogarth, Laurence Scarfe[10] and Ronald Searle, was invited to Yugoslavia to observe and record a 150-mile railway being built through voluntary labour; Horton drew the leading figures of the project. His interest had begun to lie in portraiture and landscape. This led to portrait commissions from Oxford Colleges, and to the renting of a gamekeeper's tower near Firle and Alfriston where he painted during weekends and vacations until the end of his life. He left his post as Ruskin's Master of Drawing in 1964 and moved to Lewes, from where he taught part-time at the Sir John Cass School and Hastings School of Art, while concentrating on his own work and frequently visiting Provence.[3]
During his lifetime, Horton exhibited at the
References
- ^ The Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art Oxford University Archives; retrieved 21 May 2011
- ^ Ronald Horton National Archives; retrieved 21 May 2011
- ^ ISBN 0-900660-85-6
- ^ a b "Percy Frederick Horton (1897-1970)". University of Brighton Design Archives. Retrieved 8 September 2017.
- ISBN 0-415-43221-9
- ^ Edward Chaney, 'Warburgian Artist: R.B. Kitaj, Edgar Wind, Ernst Gombrich and the Warburg Institute,' C. Kugelmann, E. Gillen and H. Gassner,Obsessions R.B. Kitaj 1932-2007 (Berlin, 2012), pp. 97–103
- The Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford. Retrieved 1 March 2019
- ^ Imperial War Museum. "Correspondence with artists, Percy Horton". Imperial War Museum. Retrieved 8 September 2017.
- ISBN 978-0-9930884-2-1.
- ^ Laurence Scarfe arts.brighton.ac.uk; retrieved 21 May 2011
- ^ Percy Horton National Portrait Gallery Collections; retrieved 22 May 2011
- ^ Percy Horton The Invalid Tate Gallery Collections; retrieved 22 May 2011
- ^ Percy Horton The Dulwich Society; retrieved 21 May 2011
External links
- 20 artworks by or after Percy Horton at the Art UK site
- Liss Fine Arts – Percy Horton; retrieved 21 May 2011
- Exhibition – Portraits and Landscape Paintings 1 December 1982 – 24 December 1982 northumbria.ac.uk; retrieved 21 May 2011
- The Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art; retrieved 22 May 2011