Artists Biography
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Select an Artist from the list below to jump straight to their Biography:
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ANSTEY, Caroline
N/A - Present
Caroline Anstey - Illustrator
Education ~
West Surrey College of Art and Design (Farnham)
(Foundation 1976-77)
(Graphic Design Higher Diploma 1977-80)
Selected Exhibitions ~
1985 The Midhurst Gallery, Midhurst
1988 The Smith’s Gallery, Covent Garden, London
1989 ‘Tails Feathers from Mother Goose’ in aid of, The Friends of the Bodleian Opie
Appeal for the Bodleian Library, Oxford. Christies Auctioneers, London
1990 ‘The Illustrator’s Art.’ The Dairy Barn, Ohio, USA
1994 The Petworth Festival
1994 The VI Premi International Catalonia D’IL.Lustracio, Palay Marc, Barcelona, Spain.
Denmark. Strasbourg, France.
2012 Treve Cottage Art Show. Petworth
Solo Exhibition ~
2004 ‘Illustrations’. The National Trust; Petworth House, West Sussex.
Illustration work: Children’s Books publishing, Greeting Cards Designs, Packaging.
Clients: Walker Books, Penguins, Oxford University Press, Julia MacRae, Templar,
Dorling Kindersley, Marks & Spencer.
First book publication in 1984. Using gouache, watercolour, line or pencil, Caroline’s style is versatile, imaginative, with a touch of wit. Very fine detailed work is a speciality.
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CASEMENT, Christina
N/A - Present
Christina Casement is an artist and designer of ceramic tiles and china, also pen and ink drawings, illustration, woodcuts and wood engravings, individual designs for bookplates and has won prizes for many of these. She exhibits and sells at juried shows, and also undertakes commissions for work in several media.
In the 1970s Christina wrote and illustrated five children’s books, (“Wandering Robinson” etc. published by The World’s Work, Heinemann Ltd.)
From 1983 much of Christina’s work has been on ceramic tile, carrying out many hundreds of commissions, from a single tile to very large panels. (Locally, her “Annunciation” can be seen in the Law Room at St. Mary & St. Gabriel Parish Church, South Harting.)
Accurate studies of birds, flowers and butterflies are a speciality as featured in Chris Blanchett’s 20th Century Decorative British Tiles Vol 3, pp 52-55.
Christina is now mainly enjoying exploring egg tempera painting, also silverpoint drawing. She also teaches the technique of painting with ceramic paints on tiles and china, and firing the work in a kiln, in regular classes at her own home.
Art Education & Training
Chichester College of Technology, West Sussex
George Mason University, Fairfax, Va, U.S.A.
Publications
The Bun Penny
Wandering Robinson
Ringing Robinson
Robinson & Slyboots
The Diaries of Harriet Dunlop (Ed.)
Exhibitions
The Midhurst Gallery (1986)
The Oxmarket, Chichester, West Sussex
Member and Exhibitor, Petersfield Arts & Crafts Society
Midhurst Art Society
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EASTWOOD, Francis Hurst
1855 - 1944
View Francis Hurst Eastwood's Artworks here.
Francis (Frank) Eastwood was born in Huddersfield on 13 March 1855. In 1874 he won a scholarship to study at The Royal Academy Schools in London and then began to work as a professional painter.
Travelling widely, he exhibited and took portrait commissions, showing his first picture - Porto San Giorgio - at the Royal Academy in 1878. At the time, he was lodging with Dr John Harvey James of Thurloe Square, a well known physician and surgeon, where he met and, in 1883, married the doctor's fourth daughter, Frances Annie James. They travelled to Tangiers for their honeymoon, the location of several of his paintings and on their return they set up house in a studio flat in Kensington Square Mansions.
In 1888 the Eastwood’s only daughter, Nina, was born. It must have seemed a wonderful bonus, in a period when the Pre-Raphaelites were popular, that she should have had Titian copper-coloured hair; Frank painted her constantly in her childhood.
Frank and Annie travelled extensively in France and Italy to paint. In 1890 they went to Paris for six months where Frank studied a different style of painting. This was the time of the Impressionists and their influence can be seen in his use of colour and his transition from the academic to a more free approach. He continued to exhibit his paintings at The Royal Academy up to 1902; some were ‘hung on the line’, an honour which helped establish his reputation and income.
At the turn of the century the family rented a house at Compton, near Guildford, for several summers and decided they would move out of London permanently. Frank went out on his bicycle one day and came back to say he had bought Anstead Brook House. Having added on a large studio, F. H. Eastwood turned his skills to painting rural subjects, travelling about by pony and trap. When visiting London he would drive his trap to Milford Station leaving the pony, complete with trap, to find its own way home!
He was an enthusiastic member of the Haslemere Society of Artists and exhibited many paintings locally from 1921 to 1928.
In 1926 the Eastwoods moved to their newly built house, Woodsome in Fernhurst designed by local architect Harold Annesley Brownrigg. Many of Frank’s paintings were very large and the floor had to be lowered during the building process to accommodate two in the drawing room.
The move to Fernhurst was precipitated by the marriage of his daughter Nina to Walter Duke, son of Fernhurst’s doctor. In 1928 the Eastwood’s only granddaughter, Maureen, was born. She has taken great pride both in Frank’s works and in providing these biographical details, hitherto unpublished.
Frank and Annie Eastwood are buried in Fernhurst, West Sussex.
LISTED: Biographical Dictionary; RSBA; New English Art Club; Dictionary of Victorian Painters; Dictionary of British Artists 1880 - 1940; Graves Dictionary; E. Benezit.
EXHIBITED: Royal Academy; Royal Society of British Artists; Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours; The Dudley Gallery, Piccadilly; Manchester City Art Gallery; Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool; Haslemere Society of Artists; The Midhurst Gallery.
View Francis Hurst Eastwood's Artworks here.
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HILL, Adrian
1897 – 1977
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HILL, Adrian (ppROI RBA RI)
1897 – 1977
View Adrian Hill's Artworks here.
Adrian Hill studied at St. John's Wood School of Art, 1912-14, then at the Royal College of Art, 1919-20.
During World War I he was an official war artist, producing outstanding pictures from the front line, now in
the Imperial War Museum (e.g. Gallery XI 1663 -Ruins (North of the Somme). He exhibited at the Royal
Academy, Royal Society of British Artists, New English Art Club, Royal Hibernian Academy, Royal Institute of
Oil Painters, in the provinces and overseas, including Paris Salon. His work is in many public collections,
including the Victoria & Albert Museum.
The War-time Artist
“Drawing on the front-line was often a hazardous, but illuminating experience. In the months before his
appointment as an artist, Adrian Hill had served as a scout and sniper. He recalled a typical drawing patrol in
No-Man's-Land:
'I advanced in short rushes, mostly on my hands and knees with my sketching kit dangling around
my neck. As I slowly approached, the wood gradually took a more definite shape, and as I crept
nearer I saw that what was hidden from our own line, now revealed itself as a cunningly contrived
observation post in one of the battered trees'.
Many of Hill's later front-line drawings share this same quality - hurriedly drawn eye-witness accounts of
lone figures scurrying across the flattened ground, tanks marooned on the battlefield, signallers feeding out
wire in a dissipated space.”
“The young war-time artists Paul Maze and Adrian Hill exercised their artistic talents in exposed forward
positions. Maze worked for fifth Army intelligence; Hill combined his drawing abilities with his work in a
Scouting and Sniping Section of the Honourable Artillery Company.”
“He was told precisely what to draw:
Towns and localities behind the lines which are specially identified with the British Army ... points of
juncture between our line and the line occupied by the French, American, Belgian and Portuguese,
so as to show the different nationalities side by side ... labour and engineering work by Coloured
Battalions which show the distinct dress of the Chinese etc., and especially some sketches of Tanks
HQ showing repairing and the like.
In time Hill produced an extensive portfolio of 187 pen and ink drawings documenting the activities of the
war zone.”
Art Therapy
Adrian Hill is credited with coining the phrase ‘Art Therapy’ in 1942 and became involved in that discipline
through King Edward VII Hospital, Midhurst. “Hill, like many art therapy pioneers, was very aware of the
traumatising effects of the war and felt that “the extent of war damaged minds, bodies and hopes far
exceed that of property and estate”, and must be dealt with. His work with injured soldiers, whose paintings
veered between escapist portraits of brunettes and depictions of horrific war scenes, led to his belief that art
therapy was more than mere recreation. Hill had been admitted into hospital in 1938 for a minor operation,
which meant lying on his side for long periods. He found himself facing a flowering cyclamen which, when
he could move more freely, he painted. From then on, he regularly painted objects which appeared on his
bedside table. Since Hill’s day, art therapy has been used clinically in areas such as mental health, for people
with learning difficulties, in education, for prisoners, and with both children and adults. Recently, in ethnic
Albanian refugee camps in the Balkans, art therapy was used to help, particularly the children, overcome
traumas.”
Adrian Hill's Sketch Club
The Sketch Club was an after-school BBC TV show in the late 1950s and early 1960s which would judge and
show pictures painted and crayoned by its young viewers. Many artists today recall their triumphs of having
their early pictures chosen for Adrian Hill’s celebrated television programme.
The Writer
The Beginner's Book of Oil Painting; How to Draw; Sketching and Painting Out of Doors; Faces and Figures;
Landscapes and Seascapes; Beginner's Book of Watercolour Painting; On Drawing and Painting Trees;
Adventures in Line and Tone; Drawing and Painting of Flowers; Painting Out Illness; Drawing countryside;
What shall we draw? Art Versus Illness: a Story of Art Therapy; Architecture in Landscape; Mastery of
Watercolour Painting.
Adrian Hill lived in Midhurst and was the first president of the Midhurst Art Society.
View Adrian Hill's Artworks here.
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MASSET, Paul F.
1967 – Present
View Paul F. Masset's Artworks here.
Paul Masset, was born in 1967 and brought up just outside Paris. At the age of eight his maternal grandfather, the late Gordon Gash of Midhurst, had introduced the young Paul to painting in oils but the defining influence of his art was derived from Peter Norton (1913-1995) who founded the Cubertou Art Centre in south west France. It was here that Paul, from the age of 16, was introduced to the medium of soft pastel inspired by Peter’s friendship with Paul Maze (1887-1979). Paul quickly showed a remarkable aptitude in acquiring Maze’s freedom and vitality of execution through this medium.
Like Paul Maze (who lived at Treyford), Paul Masset is a bi-lingual Frenchman with a foot on both sides of the channel. The Normandy School of impressionism (Monet; Manet; Sisely; Maze), the capturing of atmosphere through light and colour (Braque; Matisse; Derain) and their revelation through the medium of pastel (Degas; Vuillard; Delacroix) are the influences Paul Masset brings together in his love of nature, land and sea.
In recent years, Paul has increasingly painted in oils and demonstrates his personal and unique sensibility in his pastel drawings and paintings of Normandy, Brittany, the South of France and West Sussex.
Paul Masset has exhibited in London, Paris, Versailles, St Germain-en-Laye, Strasbourg and Chichester and many times at The Midhurst Gallery. He and his family live near Rouen.
View Paul F. Masset's Artworks here.
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ROBINSON, John
View John Robinson's Artworks here.
John Robinson was born into a painting family and his grandfather and brother were/are both professional graphic and fine artists.
John graduated in Agronomy which ultimately led to a busy career in business management which took him to any places overseas. In those days there was little time for painting but it has always been a compelling interest.
Largely self-taught, John specialises in watercolours as he enjoys exploiting the spontaneity and freshness of the medium, suggesting detail rather than labouring it, but retaining a mainly literal interpretation.
John derives particular inspiration from the form and mood of the Downs. He finds the colours and feel of autumn, winter and spring every bit as exciting as high summer. His working method is basically reliant on sketches done on site, perhaps supported by a photo, which means he lingers on the scene long enough to absorb its distinctive atmosphere. These sketches occasionally can be good enough to exhibit as they are, but more normally form the basis of finished paintings produced in the studio.
While the Sussex and Hampshire countryside are a special interest, John’s subject matter is wide ranging, including many other types of landscape, but also townscapes, boats and seascapes, still life and living creatures.
John exhibits widely; his studio opens each May as part of the Chichester Open Studios Trail, and he participates in many art society and art group exhibitions. He enjoys the camaraderie of painting and exhibiting with others.
View John Robinson's Artworks here.