Clifford Hall (painter)

Clifford Eric Martin Hall, RBA, ROI, (24 January 1904 – 25 December 1973) was a British painter of street scenes and bohemian life who towards the end of his career began to paint women covered almost head to toe and with their faces usually hidden.

Born in Wandsworth, London, Hall spent his youth in Richmond, at Sheen Avenue, then in Mount Arras Road. He was educated first at Elm Tree House School, then Richmond Hill School from 1914, followed by King's College School, Wimbledon. In the 1920s he studied at Richmond Art School under Charles Wheeler and at Putney Art School under Stanley Anderson. From 1926 to 1927 he studied at the Royal Academy schools on a Landseer Scholarship and accepted small portrait commissions which together funded his studies and lodgings in Twickenham. He was influenced by Charles Sims and Walter Sickert. From 1928 he lived in Paris where he shared a studio in Malakoff with Edwin John, son of Augustus John. Through John he was introduced to the Montparnasse district. He studied under Andre Lhote.

Hall returned to England in the 1930s where he painted local scenes in Soho and elsewhere. From 1940 he painted Quentin Crisp three times but the current whereabouts of these works is unknown. He joined a stretcher party near Lots Road during the Second World War and made independent submissions to the War Artists Advisory Committee. Some of his drawings from that period depicting the effects of air raids are in the Imperial War Museum.

His second marriage, in 1956, was to Ann Hewson his student at the Regent Street Polytechnic School of Art.

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