John Currie ( – 11 October 1914) was an
English painter and murderer. Born in Staffordshire, the illegitimate son of an Ulster-Scottish father who was a 'navvy' working on the railways and an English mother, he worked as an artist in the Potteries, painting ceramics, before going to the
Royal College of Art in 1905, and later becoming Master of Life Painting at Bristol.
He married in 1907.
In the summer of 1910 he briefly attended the
Slade School of 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 ...
, where he joined the 'Neo-Primitive' group that included fellow Slade students
Mark Gertler,
C.R.W. Nevinson
Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson (13 August 1889 – 7 October 1946) was an English figure and landscape painter, etcher and lithographer, who was one of the most famous war artists of World War I. He is often referred to by his initial ...
,
Edward Wadsworth,
Stanley Spencer
Sir Stanley Spencer, CBE RA (30 June 1891 – 14 December 1959) was an English painter. Shortly after leaving the Slade School of Art, Spencer became well known for his paintings depicting Biblical scenes occurring as if in Cookham, the small ...
and
Adrian Allinson. The contemporary art collector
Michael Sadleir described him as 'blazing with genius'; others likened him to a character in a
Dostoevsky
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (, ; rus, Фёдор Михайлович Достоевский, Fyódor Mikháylovich Dostoyévskiy, p=ˈfʲɵdər mʲɪˈxajləvʲɪdʑ dəstɐˈjefskʲɪj, a=ru-Dostoevsky.ogg, links=yes; 11 November 18219 ...
novel.
Shortly before the start of
World War I he travelled to France, painting for a time in Brittany. Currie had previously abandoned his wife and young son to begin a long and tempestuous affair with an attractive Irish model, Dolly Henry. (In full, Dorothy Eileen Henry, though sometimes written O'Henry). This ended with Currie shooting her dead at her Chelsea apartment; he then turned the gun on himself, and died in hospital a few days later. A fictionalized account of this event appears in
Gilbert Cannan
Gilbert Eric Cannan (25 June 1884 – 30 June 1955) was a British novelist and dramatist.
Early life
Born in Manchester of Scottish descent, he got on badly with his family, and in 1897 he was sent to live in Oxford with the economist Edwin Ca ...
's 1916 novel ''Mendel''. Currie's colleague, the French sculptor
Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, remarked, 'He was a great painter, and a magnificent fellow.'
His work is to be found in the
Tate Collection
and Stoke-on-Trent Museums.
References
Bibliography
*David Boyd Haycock, ''A Crisis of Brilliance: Five Young British Artists and the Great War'' (London: Old Street Publishing, 2009)
External links
Works by John Currie on the Art UK Your Paintings website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Currie, John
20th-century English painters
English male painters
Year of birth uncertain
1880s births
1914 deaths
1914 suicides
English murderers
Suicides by firearm in England
Murder–suicides in the United Kingdom
20th-century English male artists