Meredith Frampton

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.{{cite book|author=David Buckman|publisher=Art Dictionaries Ltd|year=1998|title=Artists in Britain Since 1945 Vol 1, A to L |isbn=0-95326-095-X}} 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.{{cite book|editor= HCG Matthew & Brian Harrison |publisher=Oxford University Press|year=2004|title=Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Vol 20 (Flattisbury-Freston)|isbn=0-19-861370-9}} 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.{{cite book|author=Frances Spalding|publisher=Antique Collectors' Club|year=1990|title=20th Century Painters and Sculptors |isbn=1-85149-106-6}} Frampton was an early member of the Society of Graphic Art and exhibited there in 1921. 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.{{cite web |author=Imperial War Museum|url=http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/9972 |title=Gowers, Parker and Child by Meredith Frampton |year=|accessdate=18 May 2015|work=Imperial War Museum}}

Frampton painted in smooth colours without visible brushstrokes, achieving a look of almost photographic realism.{{cite book|editor=Penelope Curtis |publisher=Tate Publishing|year=2013|title=Tate Britain Companion, A Guide to British Art|isbn=978-1-84976-033-1}} Most of his paintings were commissions, but a notable exception was Portrait of A Young Woman, which Frampton showed at the Royal Academy in 1935 and which was purchased for the Tate. Frampton had several of the objects in the painting made specially for the painting and his mother made the dress worn by the model, Margaret Austin-Jones. She modelled for him again in one of his most famous works, A Game of Patience (1937), now hanging in the Ferens Art Gallery in Hull.{{cite book|last=Lloyd|first=Christopher|title=In Search of a Masterpiece: An Art Lover's Guide to Great Britain & Ireland|year=2011|publisher=Thames & Hudson}}

During World War Two, Frampton received two commissions from the War Artists' Advisory Committee, WAAC. One was intended for the Admiralty, but a suitable subject was not found and the painting was never made. Frampton's other WAAC commission was for a portrait of Sir Ernest Gowers, which became a triple portrait of Gowers and his colleagues in their underground control room in Kensington.{{cite web |author=Imperial War Museum|url=http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/1050001074 |title=War artists archive, Meredith Frampton |year=|accessdate=17 May 2015|work=Imperial War Museum}}

In 1953 Frampton requested that the Royal Academy place him on its list of retired members. His eyesight had begun to worsen, convincing him that he could no longer paint to his previous high standard and with such meticulous detail. With his wife he moved to a hilltop house overlooking Monkton Deverill in Wiltshire.{{Cite web|url=http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20170913-meredith-frampton-is-the-forgotten-genius-of-british-art|title=Meredith Frampton is the forgotten genius of British art|last=Sooke|first=Alastair|date=20 September 2017|website=BBC Culture|access-date=18 November 2017}} Frampton had designed the property in the 1930s and for the rest of his life he worked on improving and maintaining this house, which included his own furniture and clock designs.

For many years Frampton's art was rarely shown in public and he was largely forgotten. However, he lived to see his retrospective at the Tate in 1982.{{cite web|url=https://artuk.org/discover/stories/the-mesmerising-and-peculiar-paintings-of-meredith-frampton |title=The mesmerizing and peculiar paintings of Meredith Frampton|author=Peter Elliot |publisher=Art UK |date=19 October 2017 |accessdate=1 November 2017}} It was his first one-man show and greatly restored his standing.

In 2016 Penguin Classics began employing a series of Frampton's paintings for new editions of the complete works of Russian writer Vladimir Nabokov.

{{reflist}}

• Richard Morphet, Meredith Frampton, [exhibition catalogue] The Tate Gallery, London, 1982. {{ISBN|0905005333}}.

{{Commons category|Meredith Frampton}}

• {{Art UK bio}}
• [https://ludwig-mies-vanderrohe.blogspot.com/2011/05/meredith-frampton-portraitist.html May 2011 Entry on Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Blogspot Page]
• [http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person.php?search=sa&LinkID=mp06976&role=art National Portrait Gallery Collection]

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Category:1894 births

Category:1984 deaths

Category:20th-century English painters

Category:20th-century English male artists

Category:Alumni of St John's Wood Art School

Category:Alumni of the Royal Academy Schools

Category:British Army personnel of World War I

Category:English male painters

Category:English portrait painters

Category:Painters from London

Category:People educated at Westminster School, London

Category:Royal Academicians

Category:World War II artists

Category:20th-century British war artists

Category:Artists' Rifles soldiers