Leonard William Joseph McComb (3 August 1930 – 19 June 2018) was a Scottish artist. He described his work as visual abstractions after nature. He was very interested in the detail in nature and declared that everything he drew or painted, whether a portrait head, flower, landscape, still life, or breaking sea wave, was, for him, a portrait.

Education

Leonard McComb studied at Manchester School of Art and subsequently 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 ...

from 1956 to 1959, followed by a Postgraduate in sculpture, also at the Slade, in 1960. He went on to teach at various art schools, including

Oxford Brookes University Oxford Brookes University (formerly known as Oxford Polytechnic (United Kingdom), Polytechnic) is a public university, public university in Oxford, England. It is a new university, having received university status through the Further and High ...

Sir John Cass College London Guildhall University was a university in the United Kingdom from 1992 to 2002, established when the City of London Polytechnic was awarded university status. On 1 August 2002, it merged with the University of North London to form Londo ...

Royal College of Art The Royal College of Art (RCA) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom, with campuses in South Kensington, Battersea and White City. It is the only entirely postgraduate art and design university in the United Kingdom. It offe ...

and

Goldsmiths College Goldsmiths, University of London, officially the Goldsmiths' College, is a constituent research university of the University of London in England. It was originally founded in 1891 as The Goldsmiths' Technical and Recreative Institute by the Wor ...

, and in 1974 he founded the Sunningwell School of Art, Oxford.

Biography

He was a versatile artist who celebrated working in various media and was unusual amongst his contemporaries in being represented in the

Tate Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the U ...

Gallery Collection with works in oil, watercolour, and print, as well as sculpture. His sculpture, Young Man Standing, also known as the Golden Man (Tate Gallery), was the subject of National controversy when it was withdrawn from exhibition in

Lincoln Cathedral Lincoln Cathedral, Lincoln Minster, or the Cathedral Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Lincoln and sometimes St Mary's Cathedral, in Lincoln, England, is a Grade I listed cathedral and is the seat of the Anglican Bishop of Lincoln. Constructio ...

as it was considered indecent by a senior cathedral cleric. Having destroyed most of his early work, McComb was included in the exhibition, The Human Clay, held at the Hayward Gallery in 1976; his first solo show was held the following year at the Coracle Press. In 1983, an Arts Council touring exhibition, entitled Leonard McComb Drawing Painting Sculpture, was organised by the

Museum of Modern Art, Oxford Modern Art Oxford is an art gallery established in 1965 in Oxford, England. From 1965 to 2002, it was called The Museum of Modern Art, Oxford. The gallery presents exhibitions of modern and contemporary art. It has a national and internationa ...

and shown at the

Serpentine Gallery The Serpentine Galleries are two contemporary art galleries in Kensington Gardens, Hyde Park, Central London. Recently rebranded to just Serpentine, the organisation is split across Serpentine South, previously known as the Serpentine Gallery, ...

, London; City Art Gallery, Manchester;

Gardner Arts Centre The Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts (ACCA), previously the Gardner Arts Centre, is an arts centre, part of the University of Sussex at Falmer, Brighton and Hove, UK. Its public programme includes performance, dance, live art, film, music ...

, University of Sussex; and the Fruit Market Gallery, Edinburgh. His work continued to be exhibited in many important group shows, including the

Whitechapel Art Gallery The Whitechapel Gallery is a public art gallery in Whitechapel on the north side of Whitechapel High Street, in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. The original building, designed by Charles Harrison Townsend, opened in 1901 as one of the fir ...

in 1982, the Tate Gallery in 1984, the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington D.C. in 1986, and the Museum of Modern Art, Brussels in 1987. Among McComb’s many awards are the Royal Academy’s Jubilee Award (1977); Korn Ferry Award (1990); Times Watercolour Prize (1992 and 1993); Nordstern Print Prize (1997); and the RWS Prize (1998). McComb has received many major commissions for private and corporate collections throughout the UK, Europe, and the USA. In 1999, he completed a commissioned portrait of the novelist Doris Lessing for the National Portrait Gallery, London. The following year, he was selected by the Vatican to design a Jubilee Medal, featuring Pope John Paul II and the late Archbishop Basil Hume, for the worldwide series to commemorate the Millennium. McComb was elected Royal Academician in 1991 (ARA 1987) and, in 1995, was elected Keeper of the Royal Academy, placing him in charge of the Royal Academy Schools until 1998. He was made an Honorary Member of the Royal Watercolour Society and the Royal Society of Printmakers in 1996. McComb lived and worked in Brixton, London. He was married three times: to Elizabeth Henstock in 1955 (from whom he was divorced 8 years later), to Joan Allwork in 1966 (she died in 1967) and to Barbara Gittel in 1973 (from whom he was divorced in 1999). He died on 19 June 2018 at the age of 87. His sisters Moira and Anne survived him.Leonard McComb obituary
The Guardian

References

External links

Leonard McComb RA
*
Leonard McComb , Artist , Royal Academy of Arts

‘Portrait of a Young Man Standing‘, Leonard McComb, 1963–83
{{DEFAULTSORT:McComb, Leonard 1930 births 2018 deaths English artists Royal Academicians Alumni of the Slade School of Fine Art