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Historical Artist - Thomas Cole (1908 - 1987)
After moving from Northumberland to London with his family in 1910, Sir Thomas Cole 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
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