Christopher Bucklow

Christopher Bucklow (born 1957) is a British artist. He is best known for his photographs and paintings. His work can be found in many museums across the United States. In 2007 his book on Philip Guston was published in the UK. He currently works in Somerset, England.

Christopher Bucklow was born in 1957, in Flixton, Urmston, Lancashire, England. His parents were Roy and Doreen Bucklow. Roy Bucklow was an architect, but he died before Christopher's first birthday. Christopher was adopted by his stepfather Alfred Noel Titterington, a businessman in the printing industry, in 1967 and used the name Chris Titterington until launching his art career in 1989. In his early teens he became interested in the paintings of the Impressionist painter Alfred Sisley.

In 1975, Bucklow left home to study art history at Leicester Polytechnic. His undergraduate dissertation was on the subject of Sisley's paintings. He also became interested in British watercolours and in Romantic naturalism, also American painting since 1945.

After Bucklow graduated in 1978 he accepted a post as a curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. He worked in the Prints and Drawings department. There he researched Romantic works of art on paper and early photography. He also continued his interest in contemporary art and he wrote reviews of contemporary exhibitions for Artscribe magazine, London. During this whole period as a museum curator, he did not make any art himself. He was completely absorbed in the study of the Romantic mind – in particular the developments that led to the rise of landscape in the genre hierarchy of the period. However, he was becoming interested in William Blake and would spend time after hours studying the many wonderful examples of Blake’s work that he was looking after as part of the V&A collection. During these years as a curator, he also continued his early interest in physics and astronomy. These subjects would offer him great consolation and stability- almost as a refuge from his studies of the world of the shifting human values found in the arts. (An analysis of the psychological processes going on during these years can be found in his essay "Rhetoric and Motive in the Writing of Art History; A shapeshifter’s Perspective" in Elizabeth Mansfield Ed., Remaking Art History, Routledge, New York, 2007). Occasionally Bucklow would write articles on art and the new physics for New Scientist magazine, London.

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