Meredith Frampton | |
---|---|
Born |
St John's Wood, London, England |
17 March 1894
Died | 16 September 1984 Mere, Wiltshire, England |
(aged 90)
Nationality | British |
Education | |
Known for | Portrait painting |
George Vernon Meredith Frampton RA (17 March 1894 – 16 September 1984) was a British painter and etcher, successful as a portraitist in the 1920s. His artistic career was short and his output limited because his eyesight began to fail in the 1950s, but his work is on display at the National Portrait Gallery,Tate Gallery and Imperial War Museum.
Frampton was born in the St John's Wood area of London and was the only child of the sculptor Sir George Frampton and his wife, the painter Christabel Cockerell. Frampton was educated at Westminster School and after some months learning to speak French in Geneva he enrolled at the St John's Wood School of Art. He went on to attend the Royal Academy Schools between 1912 and 1915, where he won both a first prize and a silver medal.
During the First World War, Frampton served in the British Army on the Western Front with a field survey unit, sketching enemy trenches, and also worked on the interpretation of aerial photographs. After the war Frampton resumed his artistic career and established himself as among the most highly regarded of British painters during the period. Between 1920 and 1945 he exhibited at the Royal Academy nearly every year, showing a total of thirty-two paintings there. In 1925 he was elected a member of the Art Workers Guild. In 1934 he was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy and in 1942 became a full member of the Academy. Frampton painted portraits of the Duke of York, who was to become King George VI, academics and scientists, and a series of full length portraits of women from fashionable society. He would often spend an entire year working on a single painting.