Alan Sorrell

Alan Sorrell
Noted archaeological illustrator
Born	11 February 1904
Died	21 December 1974(1974-12-21) (aged 70) Southend-on-Sea
Nationality	English
Education	The Royal College of Art
Known for	Watercolour, Archaeological illustration
Movement	Neo-romanticism
Elected	Royal Watercolour Society

Alan Ernest Sorrell (11 February 1904 – 21 December 1974) was an English artist and writer best remembered for his archaeological illustrations, particularly his detailed reconstructions of Roman Britain. He was a Senior Assistant Instructor of Drawing at The Royal College of Art, between 1931–39 and 1946–48. In 1937 he was elected a member of the Royal Watercolour Society.

Sorrell was born in Tooting, London and moved to Southend, Essex, at the age of two. The son and second child of Ernest Thomas Sorrell (1861–1910) a jeweller and watchmaker and his wife Edith Jane Sorrell née Doody (1867–1951), Alan Sorrell would often go, with his father on trips away drawing landscapes as a child. However, most of his childhood was spent confined to a bath chair due to a suspected heart condition. The early death of his father also resulted in Sorrell being very reclusive.

Sorrell trained at the Southend municipal school of art and, after a brief spell as a commercial artist in London, he attended The Royal College of Art between 1924 and 1927. Whilst there, he met William Rothenstein who would act as a mentor for Sorrell and became a close friend. In 1928, Sorrell won the British Prix de Rome in Mural painting and spent the next three years at the British School at Rome.

Sorrell returned to England in 1931 and became drawing master at the Royal College of Art where his contemporaries included Gilbert Spencer. He began his archaeological reconstruction drawings after a chance meeting in 1936 with Kathleen Kenyon on a dig of a Roman site in Leicester, who asked him to produce illustrations for her article for The Illustrated London News. More commissions then followed at Maiden Castle, in collaboration with Mortimer Wheeler, and at Roman Caerwent and Carleon, in collaboration with Cyril Fox and V. E. Nash-Williams of the National Museum of Wales.