Humphrey Ocean | |
---|---|
![]() | |
Born | Humphrey Anthony Erdeswick Butler-Bowdon 22 June 1951 Pulborough, West Sussex, England |
Education |
|
Notable work |
|
Spouse | Miranda Argyle |
Elected | Royal Academician (26 May 2004) |
Website | humphreyocean |
Humphrey Ocean RA (born 22 June 1951) [1] is a contemporary British painter.
Humphrey Ocean was born Humphrey Anthony Erdeswick Butler-Bowdon, on 22 June 1951 in Sussex. He went to Ampleforth College and in 1967 went to Tunbridge Wells School of Art for two years, going on to do a Foundation Course at Brighton College of Art and DipAD Painting at Canterbury College of Art.
It was at Canterbury that he was taught by Ian Dury, then a painter. From 1971 he was bass player with the band Kilburn and the High Roads formed at Canterbury with Dury. They opened for The Who on its Christmas tour in 1973, after which Ocean resigned from music with the notable exception of recording the single "Whoops-a-Daisy" written by Ian Dury and Russell Hardy, for Stiff Records in 1978.
Ocean's earliest notable work as an artist was as a designer and pencil-artist for record album covers and sleeves; in particular, he contributed pencil drawings for the cover and lyric insert for 10cc's 1975 album The Original Soundtrack , [2] and inner-sleeve art for Paul McCartney and Wings' 1976 album Wings at the Speed of Sound . [3]
In 1983, Ocean painted Paul McCartney's portrait as part of the first prize in the 1982 Imperial Tobacco Portrait Award with his painting Lord Volvo and his Estate and the following year painted the poet Philip Larkin's portrait, also for the National Portrait Gallery, [4] a work described by the novelist Nick Hornby as "unanswerable".
In 1988 Ocean travelled to Northern Brazil with the American anthropologist Stephen Nugent, a lecturer at the University of London, eager to expose colonial caricatures of the region. Their subsequent book, Big Mouth: The Amazon Speaks, was published by Fourth Estate (HarperCollins) in 1990, and features evocative illustrations of Brazil. In 1999 the National Maritime Museum commissioned Ocean to paint a picture of modern maritime Britain. Throughout the 1990s and the early years of the twenty-first century, Ocean's paintings were exhibited in many of the leading museums in the United Kingdom.
In 2002, Ocean was Artist-in-Residence at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, culminating in how's my driving, an exhibition linking 17th-century Dutch genre paintings with south London suburbia. [5] That year he was awarded an honorary fellowship by Canterbury College of Art where he had been a student between 1970-1973. [6] In 2009 he worked on an Artangel project Life Class: Today's Nude directed by Alan Kane, shown on Channel 4 television. He also painted Catherine Hughes in her role as principal of Somerville College, Oxford.
Ocean came to prominence with his exhibition A handbook of modern life (2012–13) at the National Portrait Gallery London curated by Rosie Broadley who wrote:
"Working swiftly in gouache on large sheets of paper in his studio, Ocean paints his sitters, including family members, friends and professional acquaintances, in simple forms and bold colours. The project has an obsessive character that is compelling and, when seen together, the portraits are an exuberant display of the artist's love of painting, colour and people. The sitters have shared the experience of sitting for a portrait, but Ocean has illuminated something unique about each person-how they tilt their head or how they wear their shirt - with an immediacy that tethers the image to the day they visited the studio."
In addition to his portrait of Philip Larkin, he is perhaps best known for his iconic etching, Black Love Chair, which appeared on the cover of Paul McCartney's 2007 album Memory Almost Full . [7] This is an image McCartney chose from the series of etchings begun in 2003 when Ocean was working with Maurice Payne in Miankoma Studio in Amagansett, Long Island.
In 2017 Ocean exhibited Dot Book 1 in Drawing Together at the Courtauld Gallery London curated by Dr Ketty Gottardo and Dr Ben Thomas who wrote:
"Humphrey Ocean’s Dot Book also represents a type of artistic wayfaring, on a local scale, as it could be described as recording a notional trip to the supermarket where it becomes ‘impossible to get to Sainsbury’s’ because there are so many arresting motifs to discover along the way which prompt the thought ‘I like that and I want to tell somebody I saw that’. However, this is not a case of taking a line for a walk but of a series of vivid illuminations registered, as it were, at thirty miles an hour throughthe windscreen of a family estate car. The unremarkable objects, logos and snatched views of corners of suburbia collected together in this album of precise, crisply executed drawings are all 'perfectly ordinary' (to use the title of one of Ocean's exhibitions)."
Ocean was elected a Royal Academician in 2004. He was Royal Academy Professor of Perspective [8] 2012 - 2020, a position once held by J. M. W. Turner.
In 2013 Lord Volvo and his Estate (1982) by Ocean was voted one of 57 of the nation’s favourite paintings and appeared on billboards around Britain in Art Everywhere organised by the Art Fund. [9] In 2014 he completed a portrait [10] of Randy Lerner for the National Portrait Gallery. In the same year he advised on Turner's approach to perspective in Mike Leigh’s film Mr Turner .
In 2012 he was made an Honorary Doctor by Canterbury Christ Church University and in 2015 an Honorary Doctor by University of Kent. Ocean designed a road sign for his friend Margaret Calvert for the 50th Anniversary of the British Road Sign exhibition at the Design Museum (2015) and showed in books + papers (2015), "Wären Fluss und Meere Tinte..." (2017) and books + papers 2 (2019) at Christine Koenig Galerie, Vienna. [11]
For the BBC, on Radio 4 he featured in Will Gompertz Gets Creative (2015), presented The Essay on Radio 3 on Impington Village College (2016) and Only Artists with Mark Alexander on Radio 4 (2018). In 2018 Ocean's solo exhibition I've No Idea Either of works on paper and sculpture was at Sims Reed Gallery London. In 2019 he had a solo exhibition Birds, Cars and Chairs in the Keeper's House at the Royal Academy of Arts. A 320 page full colour monograph of his work was published by the Royal Academy of Arts in autumn 2019. Simultaneously published by the RA is A Book of Birds by Humphrey Ocean. In 2020 he showed his painting Self in Me, Myself, I at Christine Koenig Galerie, Vienna. Fresh as Paint, Ocean's personal selection of objects and art from the school collections was shown at Eton College in 2022.
In 2023 four of his seven works recently acquired by the British Museum were displayed in New Acquisitions in the Prints and Drawings gallery.
Humphrey Ocean is married to artist Miranda Argyle and has two daughters, Ruby and Beatrice. He lives and works in south London.
His art is featured in several collections, including British Museum, London; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; British Council; The Whitworth, University of Manchester; Wolverhampton Art Gallery; National Portrait Gallery, London; National Galleries Scotland: Portrait, Edinburgh; Government Art Collection.
Thomas Gainsborough was an English portrait and landscape painter, draughtsman, and printmaker. Along with his rival Sir Joshua Reynolds, he is considered one of the most important British artists of the second half of the 18th century. He painted quickly, and the works of his maturity are characterised by a light palette and easy strokes. Despite being a prolific portrait painter, Gainsborough gained greater satisfaction from his landscapes. He is credited as the originator of the 18th-century British landscape school. Gainsborough was a founding member of the Royal Academy.
Gillian Ayres was an English painter. She is best known for abstract painting and printmaking using vibrant colours, which earned her a Turner Prize nomination.
Sir Peter Thomas Blake is an English pop artist. He co-created the sleeve design for the Beatles' 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. His other works include the covers for two of The Who's albums, the cover of the Band Aid single "Do They Know It's Christmas?", and the Live Aid concert poster. Blake also designed the 2012 Brit Award statuette.
Thomas Sidney Cooper was an English landscape painter from Canterbury, noted for his images of cattle and farm animals.
John Maler Collier was a British painter and writer. He painted in the Pre-Raphaelite style, and was one of the most prominent portrait painters of his generation. Both of his marriages were to daughters of Thomas Henry Huxley. He was educated at Eton College, and he studied painting in Paris with Jean-Paul Laurens and at the Munich Academy starting in 1875.
John Randall Bratby RA was an English painter who founded the kitchen sink realism style of art that was influential in the late 1950s. He made portraits of his family and celebrities. His works were seen in television and film. Bratby was also a writer.
Sir Norman Rosenthal is a British independent curator and art historian. From 1970 to 1974 he was Exhibitions Officer at Brighton Museum and Art Gallery. In 1974 he became a curator at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, leaving in 1976. The following year, in 1977, he joined the Royal Academy in London as Exhibitions Secretary where he remained until his resignation in 2008. Rosenthal has been a trustee of numerous different national and international cultural organisations since the 1980s; he is currently on the board of English National Ballet. In 2007, he was awarded a knighthood in the Queen's Birthday Honours List. Rosenthal is well known for his support of contemporary art, and is particularly associated with the German artists Joseph Beuys, Georg Baselitz, Anselm Kiefer and Julian Schnabel, the Italian painter Francesco Clemente, and the generation of British artists that came to prominence in the early 1990s known as the YBAs.
Euan Ernest Richard Uglow was a British painter. He is best known for his nude and still life paintings, such as German Girl and Skull.
Dame Laura Knight was an English artist who worked in oils, watercolours, etching, engraving and drypoint. Knight was a painter in the figurative, realist tradition, who embraced English Impressionism. In her long career, Knight was among the most successful and popular painters in Britain. Her success in the male-dominated British art establishment paved the way for greater status and recognition for women artists.
Frank Graham Bell was a painter of portraits, landscapes and still-life, and a founder member of the realist Euston Road School. He was also a journalist and writer on art and the artist. Born in South Africa, he spent most of his career in Britain (1931–1943), where he died in a flying accident during World War II.
Chantal Joffe is an American-born English artist based in London. Her often large-scale paintings generally depict women and children. In 2006, she received the prestigious Charles Wollaston Award from the Royal Academy.
Sir Cedric Lockwood Morris, 9th Baronet was a British artist, art teacher and plantsman. He was born in Swansea in South Wales, but worked mainly in East Anglia. As an artist he is best known for his portraits, flower paintings and landscapes.
William Scott was a prominent abstract painter from Northern Ireland, known for his themes of still life, landscape and female nudes. He is the most internationally celebrated of 20th-century Ulster painters. His early life was the subject of the film Every Picture Tells a Story, made by his son James Scott.
Bryan Organ is a British artist considered one of the leading and most innovative English portrait painters of the 20th century. His paintings have included portraits of prominent public figures and of members of the British royal family. Organ is also known for landscape paintings, such as St Pancras Station,, and lithographic studies of animals (Tate). London's National Portrait Gallery holds a total of sixteen of his portraits of which six were commissioned by the Gallery's Trustees.
David Remfry is a British painter and curator. He served as the Eranda Professor of Drawing at the Royal Academy Schools from 2016 to 2018 and a Judge for the Royal Academy of Arts Charles Wollaston Award 2021. In 2023 he coordinated the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition. A retrospective of Remfry’s work, curated by Dr Gerardine Mulcahy-Parker, is planned for 2025 at Beverley Art Gallery, East Riding.
Carl Randall is a British figurative painter, whose work is based on images of modern Japan and London.
Jean Esme Oregon Cooke RA was an English painter of still lifes, landscapes, portraits and figures. She was a lecturer at the Royal Academy and regularly exhibited her works, including the summer Royal Academy exhibitions. She was commissioned to make portraits by Lincoln College and St Hilda's College, Oxford. Her works are in the National Gallery, Tate and the Royal Academy collections. In the early years of her marriage, she signed her works Jean Bratby.
Ustad Bashir Ahmed is a Pakistani painter, also known as Mughal Miniature Painter.
Evan Charlton (1904–1984) was a British artist who painted surrealist landscapes and interiors.
Kaff GerrardnéeKatherine Leigh-Pemberton (1894-1970) was a British artist. Although she was a prolific painter and potter, Gerrard rarely exhibited during her lifetime and only gained significant recognition after her death. A 1991 exhibition led to a number of British national museums acquiring examples of her work.
Mr Humphrey Ocean, painter, 60