Anthony Eyton RA
Eyton is a figurative painter working in what could be termed the post-Impressionist tradition. He has exhibited extensively throughout Britain at leading galleries such as the Royal Academy, the Tate Gallery, the South London Gallery, the Hayward Gallery and the Imperial War Museum. He has won many awards, including the John Moores Prize in 1972, and in 1976 was elected an Associate Royal Academician (A.R.A) a full member in 1986 and a Senior R.A. in 1998.
Among his many significant commissions was the 1994 invitation by the Tate Gallery to work in the Bankside Power Station prior to it becoming Tate Modern. Based in south London, he continues to work and exhibit into his eighties. Examples of Eyton's paintings are held in major public and private collections throughout the world.
Biography
1923 Born 17 May at Teddington, Middlesex. Childhood spent in Hampshire.
1936-41 Attends Canford School, Wimborne, Dorset. Taught by Enid Canning, William Coldstream and Ian Fleming-Williams.
1941 Attends department of Fine Art, University of Reading. Taught by Professor Anthony Betts.
1942-7 Served in the army.
1947-51 Attends Camberwell School of Art and Crafts, London. Taught by William Coldstream, John Dodgson, Victor Pasmore and Claude Rogers.
1951 Teaches at Portsmouth College of Art and Design.
1951-3 Attends British School at Rome, Italy (Abbey Major Scholarship).
1952 Exhibits for the first time with the London Group.
1953-4 Assistant Lecturer; Department of Fine art, King’s College, University of Durham, Newcastle upon Tyne.
1954 Exhibits for the first time at the Royal Academy of Arts, London.
1955 Begins teaching at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts. Spends three months in Greece. First solo exhibition at St George’s Gallery, Cork Street.
1956-8 Many visits to the north of England.
1957-60 Works from his studio in Kings Road, Chelsea.
1960 Marries Mary Capell (divorced 1982) and moves to Brixton, London. Teaches at South West Essex Technical College and School of Art, Walthamstow, London.
1961 Elected member of the London Group. Daughter Jane born.
1963 Teaches at summer school, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Daughter Clare born. Starts teaching at the Royal Academy Schools, London.
1964 Daughter Sarah born.
1968-84 Works from his studio in Spitalfields.
1969-71 Head of Painting, St Lawrence College, Kingston Ontario.
1976 Elected Associate of the Royal Academy of Arts.
1978-9 Spends Winter months in India.
1984 Elected member of the Royal West of England Academy.
1986 Elected Royal Academician and member of the New English Art Club
1988 Elected member of the Royal Watercolour Society. Commissioned to paint the Vane Family, Hutton–in-the-Forest.
1993 Elected member of the Royal Cambrian Academy.
1994 Invited by the Tate Gallery to work in Bankside Power Station prior to it becoming Tate Modern.
1996 Commissioned by the Government Art Collection to record the centenary of the British Embassy in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Commissioned to paint the Chairman of Unilever, Sir Michael Perry.
1999 Becomes Artist in Residence at the Eden Project, Cornwall.
2001 Obtains permission to work in Battersea Power Station, London; continues to 2023, when safety regulations prevent further access.
Bankside - The Turbine Hall
The Tank, Bankside Power Station
Awards
1951-3 Abbey Major Scholarship, British School at Rome
1971 Kingston Whig-Standard Award, Kingston, Ontario
1972 John Moores prize winner, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool
1973 Grocers’ Company Fellowship to work in Italy
1975 First prize, Second British International Drawing Biennale, Middlesborough
1989 Charles Wollaston Award, Royal Academy Summer Exhibition
Solo Exhibitions
1955 St George’s Gallery, London
1957 Galerie de Seine, London
1959 New Art Centre, London
1961 New Art Centre, London
1968 New Art Centre, London
1971 Boswell’s Gallery, Kingston, Ontario
1973 New Grafton Gallery, London
1975 William Derby Gallery, London
1978 Browse & Darby, London
‘Windows on the World’, Newcastle upon Tyne Polytechnic Art Gallery
1980 Retrospective Exhibition, South London Art Gallery; Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne; City Museum & Art Gallery, Plymouth, curated by Kenneth Sharpe
1983 Hong Kong and the New Territories’, work commissioned by the Artistic Records Committee, Imperial War Museum, London
1985 Browse & Derby, London
1987 Browse & Derby, London
The Leicester Royal Infirmary, Surrey University and the King’s Fund Centre
1990 ‘A Sort of Touchability’, Austin Desmond Fine Art, London
Browse & Darby, London
1993 Browse & Darby, London
1996 Browse & Darby, London
1997 A.T. Kearney, London
1998 Prince of Wales Foundation, London
2000 Browse & Darby, London
Royal Academy of Arts Friends’ Room, London
2002 King’s Road Gallery, London
Selected Group Exhibitions
1952 First exhibits with London Group
1966 ‘Survey ’66: Figurative Painters’; Hampstead (now Camden) Arts Centre, London
1968 ‘From Life’, Camden Arts Centre, London, curated by Peter Carey
1972 ‘Vanishing London’, The New Grafton Gallery, London
1975 ‘Drawing of People’, Arts Council, Serpentine Gallery, curated by Patrick George
1977 ‘British Painting 1952-77’, Royal Academy of Arts, London
1978 ‘The British Art Show’, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London
1979 Summer Show, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London
‘The British Art Show’, Mappin Art Gallery, Sheffield; Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne; Royal West of England Academy, Bristol
1980 ‘The Newcastle Connection’, Polytechnic Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne
1981 ’Isreal Observed’, The Mall Gallery, London, Curated by Helene Marks
‘The Subjective Eye’, South Hill Park Art Centre, Bracknel, curated by Moira Kelsey
‘Art and the Sea’, Institute of Contemporary Art, London; Bluecoat Gallery and The Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool
1982 Hayward Annual, Hayward Gallery, London
1983 ‘City Visions: Urban Landscape Painting in Britain 1951-82’, Bolton Art Gallery
‘Paintings of Israel’, Highgate Gallery, London
1984 ‘The Hard Won Image’, Tate Gallery, London
1985 ‘A Singular Vision’, Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter, and South London Art Gallery
1986 Spring Exhibition by Artist Members, Royal West of England Academy, Bristol
1990 ‘Works on Paper’, Cadogan Contemporary Art, London
‘On a Theme of Water: Watercolourists from the Royal Academy’, Bankside Gallery, London
1992 An Exhibition of Christian Images, St Marylebone Parish Church, London
1993 ‘India revisited’, The New Academy Gallery, London
1994 ‘Five Protagonists’, Browse & Darby, London
1997 ‘Explorations’, A.T. Kearney, London
1998 ‘Artists in National Parks – Exmoor’, Victoria and Albert Museum, London
2000 ‘India and other Places: Anthony Eyton and Phyllis Eyton’, Friends’ Room, Royal Academy of Arts, London
‘Order and Event – Landscape Now’, Art Space Gallery, London curated by Andrew Lambirth
2003 ‘Eyton:Clossick’, Woodlands Art Gallery, London
Public Collections
Arts Council England
British Museum, London
Carlisle Art Gallery
Contemporary Arts Society
The Eden Project, St Austell
Government Art Collection
Guildhall Art Gallery, London
Imperial War Museum, London
Leicester Royal Infirmary
London transport
Plymouth Art Gallery
Royal Academy of Arts, London
Royal West of England Academy, Bristol
Tate London
Tower Art Gallery, Eastbourne
Anthony Eyton is the last of the great Euston Road painters, a group founded in October 1937 by William Coldstream, Victor Pasmore and Claude Rogers which had its pre-war premises at 314-316 Euston Road and then re-emerged at the Camberwell School of Art after 1945. The group became synonymous with aesthetically pleasing paintings derived from close observation, careful measurement, subtle use of colours, structural composition and balance.
Eyton began painting when he was a boarder at Canford in 1941, he was tutored by Ian Fleming Williams and William Coldstream, a friend of the Reverend Clifford Canning, Canford’s cultured and civilised Headmaster. The Cannings took a close interest in Eyton’s emergence as a young artist of talent and promise and he describes Enid Canning as his earliest inspiration. Coldstream remained a defining influence on his work and was the main reason why Eyton joined Camberwell School of Art in 1947 after he was demobilised from the Army.
Eyton won the Abbey Major scholarship in 1951 which took him to paint in Rome for two years. Like many artists, he combined painting and exhibiting with teaching and amongst his many posts, he taught at Camberwell and in the Royal Academy schools. He was elected a Royal Academician in 1976 and his paintings have won many accolades and prizes over the years, including a John Moores Prize in 1972 and the Charles Wollaston Award in 1989. He is widely travelled, painting in Brazil, Australia, China, Japan, India, France, Greeceand Sudan. He received Foreign Office commissions to paint in Hong Kong and Ethiopia and for two years was the Head of Painting at St Lawrence College, Kingston Ontario.
Through direct observation and careful study of a particular place he captures its appearance, history and intangible genius loci. He has developed his own pictorial language by welcoming the poetic realms of the subject. For Eyton, a landscape is not just to be admired as a sunset, seascape or an attractive view over the mountains, but something to be climbed over, trodden on, lain in, discovered and experienced from every conceivable angle. He was strongly influenced by Constable whose description of painting as “another word for feeling” resonates strongly in his work. He says the proximity of the river and the mill at Canford drew him closer to the works of Constable. Eyton and his close friend at Canford, fellow artist Sir Ninian Buchan-Hepburn, could often be seen setting off on their bicycles to paint the local landscape.
When Augustus John, visiting Canford, presented Anthony with the landscape prize for the picture of the Canford Mill (Figure 1 below) he described him as “very promising, very promising indeed”.
From painting the ruins of classical antiquity in the Roman Campagna to documenting the stripping out of Gilbert Scott’s Bankside and Battersea Power Stations, Eyton has always been fascinated by the decadent. He was also artist-in-residence for the Eden Project in the 1990s, where he chronicled the construction of the futuristic-looking Biomes which emerged from the clay pits around St Austell.
Anthony’s mother Phyllis was an accomplished artist herself and exhibited at the RA but was tragically killed in a hunting accident when he was just six. After 92 years it is surprising how strongly he still feels this loss deprived as he was not only of a loving mother but of an early champion of his talent. Daily appreciation of her paintings on his walls gives him constant joy.
Anthony and fellow artist Mark Flawn-Thomas were commissioned by the Headmaster of Stowe School, Dr Anthony Wallersteiner in 2015 to do a series of paintings to celebrate the upcoming Centenary of the school. Wallersteiner himself an art historian and a Trustee of Tate St Ives describes Eyton as “one of the greatest living landscape artists”.
Canford was founded together with Stowe in 1923 by the Reverend Percy Warrington as part of the evangelising mission of the Martyrs Memorial Trust to advance the Protestant principles of the Church of England. As it was started in the same year and the same month by the same man it was thought appropriate that it should also receive the artistic attention of Eyton to celebrate its Centenary. In addition to being an alumnus of Canford it is a happy coincidence that Anthony will also celebrate his hundredth year on the 17th May 2023.
After hearing about the Stowe Centenary art project, Ben Vesseyapproached Eyton and it was agreed that he would come and paint at Canford. After a year in which the logistics of travelling for a 98-year-old were something of a challenge, Anthony and Mark finally made it to Canford on the 10th of June this year. They spent two days painting the school suitably“socially distanced”, and have both produced works worthy of reproduction. The project is ongoing but, in the meantime, Anthony has generously offered to have one of his works auctioned to raise money for the new library. Limited edition prints of his view of the school will be available for parents and alumni to buy, a share of which will also go towards funding the new library.
Mark Flawn-Thomas who has painted with Anthony over the past decade, describes Eyton as “ever-youthful in spirit and treats every painting as a battle to inject feeling and freshness of vision into his subject matter”. Anthony himself likes to quote TS Eliot “Old men ought to be explorers, here and there does not matter, we must be still and still moving, into another intensity”. There is something of a resurgent energy in the man in this final furlong of his life and it is an honour to be witness to this.