Oil on Canvas, 52x59cm.
Edward Burnham Hughes N.E.A.C. 1905-1987
Provenance: New English Art Club exhibit (exhibition label verso)
Frank Hughes was born at St. Pancras, London. He studied at St. Martin’s School of Art in the 1920’s and served in the British Army in WW2. In order to support himself he worked in administration for the London Water Board.
He had an important friendship with the painter Edward Bishop R.B.A., N.E.A.C. Other contemporaries were Francis Gower, Brian Blow and Ronald Horton. He also worked with Marjorie Jenkins at and around Gooseberry Cottage, Lindsey Tye, near Hadleigh, Suffolk.
His partner in later years was Kathleen Haacke MBE. He traveled with her in Italy and France, producing on their travels drawings and watercolours of landscapes and cafes: these formed the basis of subsequent paintings, often, like his portraits, dark and small.
He had a hatred of the establishment and was very left wing in his outlook. He spent most of his life in Hampstead and North London, working from a studio in Muswell Hill for 25 years.
