![Ambrose McEvoy Selfportrait](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9b/Ambrose_McEvoy_Selfportrait.jpg)
Arthur Ambrose McEvoy (12 August 1877 – 4 January 1927) was an English artist. His early works are
landscapes and interiors with figures, in a style influenced by
James McNeill Whistler
James Abbott McNeill Whistler (; July 10, 1834July 17, 1903) was an American painter active during the American Gilded Age and based primarily in the United Kingdom. He eschewed sentimentality and moral allusion in painting and was a leading pr ...
. Later he gained success as a
portrait
A portrait is a portrait painting, painting, portrait photography, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face and its expressions are predominant. The intent is to display the likeness, Personality type ...
painter, mainly of women and often in watercolour.
Biography
![Francis Derwent Wood - Ambrose McEvoy; a caricature portrait - 1919 - 9522](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d0/Francis_Derwent_Wood_-_Ambrose_McEvoy%3B_a_caricature_portrait_-_1919_-_9522.jpg)
McEvoy was born and baptised in
Crudwell,
Wiltshire
Wiltshire (; abbreviated Wilts) is a historic and ceremonial county in South West England with an area of . It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset to the southwest, Somerset to the west, Hampshire to the southeast, Gloucestershire ...
, in 1877, the son of Charles Ambrose McEvoy, a Scottish engineer, and his wife Mary Jane, although his parents’ address was given as 3 Carlisle Street,
Soho Square, London. His younger brother
Charles
Charles is a masculine given name predominantly found in English language, English and French language, French speaking countries. It is from the French form ''Charles'' of the Proto-Germanic, Proto-Germanic name (in runic alphabet) or ''*k ...
became a playwright. Encouraged by Whistler, who spotted his talent early on, McEvoy enrolled at the
Slade School of Fine Art
The UCL Slade School of Fine Art (informally The Slade) is the art school of University College London (UCL) and is based in London, England. It has been ranked as the UK's top art and design educational institution. The school is organised as ...
in
London
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
when he was fifteen. At the Slade he was part of the group around
Augustus John and
William Orpen
Major Sir William Newenham Montague Orpen, (27 November 1878 – 29 September 1931) was an Irish artist who worked mainly in London. Orpen was a fine draughtsman and a popular, commercially successful painter of portraits for the well-to-do in ...
. McEvoy had the reputation for a fine technical skill in oils, learnt from study with Whistler. He later worked with
Walter Sickert in
Dieppe. While at the Slade he was fellow pupil of
Gwen John
Gwendolen Mary John (22 June 1876 – 18 September 1939) was a Welsh artist who worked in France for most of her career. Her paintings, mainly portraits of anonymous female sitters, are rendered in a range of closely related tones. Although sh ...
, with whom he had an unhappy affair.
From 1900 he exhibited at the
New English Art Club (NEAC), and became a member in 1902. In the same year he married the painter
Mary Edwards (1870–1941). In 1907 he held a one-person exhibition at the Carfax Gallery. In 1911 he was a founder-member of the National Portrait Society, and in 1913 he became a member of the International Society. His works that he exhibited at the NEAC were landscapes and interiors. But after about 1915 he established a reputation as a portrait painter of fashionable society beauties, often painted in watercolor in a rapid, sketchy style.
During the
First World War
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
, McEvoy was attached to the Royal Naval Division from 1916 to 1918 and "painted a number of distinguished sailors and soldiers, now in the Imperial War Museum",
Tate Collection: Ambrose McEvoy
/ref> and the National Maritime Museum.
McEvoy visited New York and exhibited there at the Duveen Galleries in 1920. In 1924 he was made an Associate of the Royal Academy
The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly in London. Founded in 1768, it has a unique position as an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects. Its purpo ...
and of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, and of the Royal Watercolour Society in 1926. He also exhibited at the Grosvenor
Grosvenor may refer to:
People
* Grosvenor (surname)
* Hugh Grosvenor, 7th Duke of Westminster
* Grosvenor Francis (1873–1944), Australian politician
* Grosvenor Hodgkinson (1818–1881), English lawyer and politician
Places, buildings and ...
, Grafton Grafton may refer to:
Places
Australia
* Grafton, New South Wales
Canada
* Grafton, New Brunswick
* Grafton, Nova Scotia
* Grafton, Ontario
England
* Grafton, Cheshire
* Grafton, Herefordshire
*Grafton, North Yorkshire
* Grafton, Oxfordshi ...
and Leicester Galleries.
McEvoy died in Pimlico, London, on 4 January 1927. In 1928 he was represented in the Royal Academy Late Members Exhibition. In 1933 he was memorialised together with Orpen and Charles Ricketts in an exhibition in Manchester.
A major retrospective exhibition was held at the Philip Mould Gallery on Pall Mall from November to January 2019. It included newly rediscovered works.
Notes
Bibliography
*Chamot, Mary, Farr Dennis, and Butlin, Martin, The Modern British Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, London 1964, II
*Johnson, Claude, (ed.), The Works of Ambrose McEvoy from 1900 to May 1919, 1919
*R ginald M. Y.G. eadowe Ambrose McEvoy, 1924
*'Wigs', The Work of Ambrose McEvoy, 1923
External links
*
Profile on Royal Academy of Arts Collections
The Art of Ambrose McEvoy
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mcevoy, Ambrose
1877 births
1927 deaths
19th-century English painters
English male painters
20th-century English painters
People from Wiltshire
Alumni of the Slade School of Fine Art
English people of Irish descent
Associates of the Royal Academy
19th-century English male artists
20th-century English male artists