Maxwell Armfield

Maxwell Armfield
Self-Portrait (1901), Tempera on sketching board
Born	5 October 1881 Ringwood, England
Died	23 January 1972 Warminster, England
Nationality	English
Education	Birmingham School of Art, Académie de la Grande Chaumière
Known for	painting, tempera
Movement	Arts and crafts movement Birmingham Group

Maxwell Ashby Armfield (5 October 1881 – 23 January 1972) was an English artist, illustrator and writer.

Born to a Quaker family in Ringwood, Hampshire, Armfield was educated at Sidcot School and at Leighton Park School. In 1887 he was admitted to Birmingham School of Art, then under the headmastership of Edward R. Taylor and established as a major centre of the Arts and Crafts Movement. There he studied under Henry Payne and Arthur Gaskin and, outside the school, received instruction in tempera painting from Joseph Southall at Southall's studio in Edgbaston.

He was later to recall:

Leaving Birmingham in 1902, he moved to Paris to study at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière under Gustave Courtois and René Menard, where he became an associate of Gaston Lachaise, Keith Henderson, and Norman Wilkinson. He exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1904, where his painting Faustine was bought by the French State and donated to the Musée du Luxembourg, and is now in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris.

In 1909 he married the author and playwright Constance Smedley who was first cousin of his friend and fellow artist William Smedley-Aston and his wife Irene, and, like many with connections to the Arts and Crafts Movement in Birmingham, settled in the Cotswolds. In 1911, they both appear on the census of that year as resident in Minchinhampton (Gloucestershire). The couple became close collaborators: working together to combine design, illustration, text and theatre. Armfield's wife also influenced him to become a pacifist and Christian Scientist.