| |
Historical Artist - William Coldstream (1908 - 1987)
After moving from Northumberland to London with his family in 1910, Sir William Coldstream
studied at Slade School and joined the London Group. He focused on filmmaking for three years
before returning to painting and joining the Euston Road School at the encouragement of Kenneth
Clark. Coldstream’s conventional subject matters, urban scenes, portraits, and nudes,
worked well with the school’s emphasis on figurative and realist painting. At the outbreak
of WWII, Coldstream joined the Royal Artillery and then worked as a war artist in Cairo and
Italy. He also wrote the Coldstream Report in 1960, an arts administration document that
developed the art instruction techniques in the United Kingdom. His type of realism had its
basis in careful measurement, carried out by the following method: standing before the subject
to be painted, a brush is held upright at arm's length. With one eye closed, the artist can, by
sliding a thumb up or down the brush handle, take the measure of an object or interval. This
finding is compared against other objects or intervals, with the brush still kept at arm's
length. Informed by such measurements, the artist can paint what the eye sees without the use of
conventional perspective. The surfaces of Coldstream's paintings carry many small horizontal and
vertical markings, where he recorded these coordinates so that they could be verified against
reality. As a result of his painstaking methods, Coldstream worked slowly, often taking scores
of sittings over several months to complete a work. His subjects include still-life, landscapes
(usually centered on architecture), portraits, and the female nude. The Tate Gallery has several
of his paintings.
Contemporary United Kingdom Artists
Art Galleries in the United Kingdom
|
