Leonard Rosoman
| Leonard Rosoman | |
|---|---|
Men of the Auxiliary Fire Service in London, c.1940: Left to right, Auxiliary Firemen Bernard Hailstone, Leonard Rosoman and Richard Southern.
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| Born |
Leonard Rosoman 27 October 1913 London |
| Died | 21 February 2012 (aged 98) |
| Nationality | English |
| Education |
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| Known for | Drawing, painting |
Leonard Rosoman OBE RA (27 October 1913 – 21 February 2012) was a British artist.
Rosoman was born in London and educated at the Deacon's school, Peterborough, and then at the King Edward VII school of art in Newcastle upon Tyne, under E.M.O'R. Dickey in 1930–4, at the Royal Academy Schools in 1935–6 and at the Central School under Bernard Meninsky in 1937–8.
His first major break came in 1937, with a commission to illustrate My Friend Mr Leakey, a children's book by the scientist JBS Haldane. From 1938 he ran life classes at the Reinmann school, the London branch of a Berlin art college.
At the beginning of the Second World War Rosoman joined the Auxiliary Fire Service, which in 1941 became the National Fire Service, and began making paintings based on his experiences as a fire-fighter during the Battle of Britain and the Blitz in London. One of these A House Collapsing on Two Firemen, Shoe Lane, London, EC4 (1941), now in the Imperial War Museum, shows the incident on the night of 29/30 December 1940 in which a young fireman who had just relieved Rosoman at his position was killed by a collapsing building in the City of London. Whilst the other fireman, the author William Sansom, survived, the scene haunted Rosoman and he re-worked the painting several times. Rosoman called his work, The Falling Wall. It was completed in August, 1941. The painting was shown in the Firemen Artists exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1941. A number of artists had joined the NFS and an firemen artists' committee had been formed which included Bernard Hailstone, Paul Lucien Dessau, Norman Hepple and Robert Coram as well as Rosoman. As well as contributing to both War Artists' Advisory Committee, WAAC, and specialist civil defence art shows, the firemen held several of their own exhibitions.
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