Dennis Creffield (29 January 1931 – 26 June 2018) was a British artist with work owned by major British and worldwide art collections, including the

Tate Gallery 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 ...

, The

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

Arts Council of England The arts are a very wide range of human practices of creative expression, storytelling and cultural participation. They encompass multiple diverse and plural modes of thinking, doing and being, in an extremely broad range of media. Both h ...

, the

Government Art Collection The Government Art Collection (GAC) is the collection of artworks owned by the UK government and administered by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). The GAC's artworks are used to decorate major government buildings in t ...

, The

Los Angeles County Museum of Art The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is an art museum located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits (George C. Page Museum). LACMA was founded in 19 ...

Leeds City Art Gallery Leeds Art Gallery in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England, is a gallery, part of the Leeds Museums & Galleries group, whose collection of 20th-century British Art was designated by the British government in 1997 as a collection "of national importance ...

University of Leeds , mottoeng = And knowledge will be increased , established = 1831 – Leeds School of Medicine1874 – Yorkshire College of Science1884 - Yorkshire College1887 – affiliated to the federal Victoria University1904 – University of Leeds , ...

collection,

Williams College Museum of Art The Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA) is a college-affiliated art museum in Williamstown, Massachusetts. It is located on the campus of Williams College, and is close to the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) and the Clark Ar ...

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collection, Swindon Art Gallery collection and others. He died at the age of 87, and was buried in the Bear Road (City) Cemetery in Brighton.

Early life and education

Creffield was born in London, and studied at the Borough Polytechnic under David Bomberg from 1948 to 1951, during which time he exhibited as a member of the

Borough Group The Borough Group was a collective of mid-20th-century artists from the Borough area of Southwark, South London. The group was associated with David Bomberg, who was then teaching a number of the artists that formed the group at the Borough Poly ...

, which included Bomberg and fellow students Cliff Holden, Dorothy Mead, Miles Peter Richmond and

Leslie Marr Sir Leslie Lynn Marr of Sunderland, 2nd Baronet (14 August 1922 – 4 May 2021) was a British landscape artist, painter and racing driver. Early life, education and military service Marr was born in Durham, England, the son of Lieutenant Col ...

. He later studied at 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 ...

, part of the

University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in post-nominals) is a federal public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The university was established by royal charter in 1836 as a degree ...

from 1957 to 1961, where he won the Tonks Prize for Life Drawing and the Steer Medal for Landscape Painting. In 1961 he was first prizewinner in the John Moores Prize Exhibition, at the

Walker Art Gallery The Walker Art Gallery is an art gallery in Liverpool, which houses one of the largest art collections in England outside London. It is part of the National Museums Liverpool group. History of the Gallery The Walker Art Gallery's collection ...

in Liverpool. In the same year he showed work in an Arts Council of Great Britain national touring exhibition, Six Young Painters. Then, in 1964, he was recommended to the

by the eminent art theorist Herbert Read to become the Gregory Fellow in Art, a post he held from 1964 to 1966. It was whilst a Gregory Fellow that Creffield began teaching, both at the University of Leeds and

Leeds College of Art Leeds Arts University is a specialist arts further and higher education institution, based in the city of Leeds, West Yorkshire, England, with a main campus opposite the University of Leeds. History It was founded in 1846 as the Leeds Scho ...

, and he was subsequently to teach at various art colleges in Britain and abroad, including the

University for the Creative Arts The University for the Creative Arts is a specialist art and design university in the south of England. It was formed in 2005 as University College for the Creative Arts at Canterbury, Epsom, Farnham, Maidstone and Rochester when the Kent Ins ...

and the Cyprus College of Art.

Work and commissions

In 1985, Creffield was commissioned by the Arts Council to draw every cathedral in England, a task undertaken by living in a camper van for two years. This resulted in the exhibition 'English Cathedrals' at the

Hayward Gallery The Hayward Gallery is an art gallery within the Southbank Centre in central London, England and part of an area of major arts venues on the South Bank of the River Thames. It is sited adjacent to the other Southbank Centre buildings (the R ...

, London, which subsequently toured Britain (1988–1990), and a related book written by Creffield. Six of these drawings, including 'Peterborough: Approaching the West Front' and several views of Canterbury Cathedral were acquired by the

in 1990. A very positive review by the distinguished writer on art, Peter Fuller, of a touring exhibition of Creffield's drawings of English cathedrals appeared in the first issue of the journal, Modern Painters (then edited by Fuller, its founder), together with an essay by Roy Oxlade on their teacher, David Bomberg. After the cathedrals of England, further series of drawings were commissioned, including the cathedrals of northern France, shown at the Albemarle Gallery in London in 1991. In 2005, Flowers Gallery, London, staged a major retrospective exhibition and published a catalogue including a foreword by novelist Howard Jacobson and a conversation between Dennis & Professor Lynda Morris. Creffield's importance as a contemporary draughtsman was also recognised in 2008 when he was included in the exhibition 'Drawn from the Collection, 400 Years of British Drawing' at

Tate Britain Tate Britain, known from 1897 to 1932 as the National Gallery of British Art and from 1932 to 2000 as the Tate Gallery, is an art museum on Millbank in the City of Westminster in London, England. It is part of the Tate network of galleries in ...

. In 2011 he staged a major exhibition entitled ‘Jerusalem’ at James Hyman Gallery, inspired by the city and by William Blake's great poem. A great critical and commercial success, Creffield considered the show to be the climax of his career Creffield's work was greatly admired by fellow artists and writers such as

R. B. Kitaj Ronald Brooks Kitaj (; October 29, 1932 – October 21, 2007) was an American artist who spent much of his life in England. Life He was born in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, United States. His Hungarian father, Sigmund Benway, left his mother, Jeanne ...

Peter Redgrove Peter William Redgrove (2 January 1932 – 16 June 2003) was a British poet, who also wrote prose, novels and plays with his second wife Penelope Shuttle. Life and career Redgrove was born in Kingston upon Thames, Surrey. He was educated at Ta ...

Edward Lucie-Smith John Edward McKenzie Lucie-Smith (born 27 February 1933), known as Edward Lucie-Smith, is a Jamaican-born English writer, poet, art critic, curator and broadcaster. He has been highly prolific in these fields, writing or editing over a hundred ...

Henri Cartier-Bresson Henri Cartier-Bresson (; 22 August 1908 – 3 August 2004) was a French humanist photographer considered a master of candid photography, and an early user of 35mm film. He pioneered the genre of street photography, and viewed photography as cap ...

, Regina Derieva,

Howard Jacobson Howard Eric Jacobson (born 25 August 1942) is a British novelist and journalist. He is known for writing comic novels that often revolve around the dilemmas of British Jewish characters.Ragi, K. R., "Howard Jacobson's ''The Finkler Question'' as ...

and

Peter Ackroyd Peter Ackroyd (born 5 October 1949) is an English biographer, novelist and critic with a specialist interest in the history and culture of London. For his novels about English history and culture and his biographies of, among others, William ...

. He was represented for many years by James Hyman Gallery in London and his estate is now represented by Waterhouse & Dodd in London.

* ''Looking into Paintings – Dennis Creffield'', 'Narrative' episode of the Malachite TV series. Dir. Norbert Lynton, Channel 4, 1985. * ''The Invisible Recorder – Dennis Creffield's East Anglian Cathedrals''. Dir. Charles Mapleston, Anglia Television, 1989. * ''Summer Painting. Dennis Creffield at Salisbury Cathedral''. Dir. Carolyn Djanogly, Meridian Films, 1996.

Selected bibliography

* ''Fyra engelsmän/Four English Painters'', exh. cat., with text by Torsten Renqvist, Gummesons konstgalleri, Stockholm,1952 * Spalding, F. & Collins, J., ''Dictionary of British Art'', Volume 6: 20th Century Painters and Sculptors, Antique Collectors’ Club Ltd., London, 1977 * Kate Aspinall
‘Artist Versus Teacher: The Problem of David Bomberg's Pedagogical Legacy’
Tate Papers, no.33, 2020, , accessed 18 December 2020. * Richard Cork, ''David Bomberg'', Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1987 * ''English Cathedrals: Drawings by Dennis Creffield'', exh. cat., with foreword by R.B. Kitaj and texts by Dennis Creffield, South Bank Centre Publications, London, 1987 * David Beckham, ''Artists in Britain Since 1945'', Art Dictionaries, Ltd., London, 1988 * ''Midsummer Night's Dream: Drawings and Paintings by Dennis Creffield'', exh. cat., with foreword by Philip Dodd. Goldmark, 1989 * "Portrait of the Artist /Interview with Dennis Creffield/", ''The Artist's & Illustrator's Magazine'', Issue 42, March 1990 * Dan Hofstadt, "Dungeon Masters... ", ''The New Yorker'', 12 November 1990 * ''French Cathedrals: Drawings by Dennis Creffield'', exh. cat., with foreword by Richard Cork, Albemarle Gallery, London, 1991 * Peter Fuller, ''Modern Painters: Reflections on British Art'', (edited by John McDonald), Methuen, London, 1993 * Robert Snell, "Faces in the slighted sediment", ''The Times Literary Supplement'', 19 July 2002 * ''Impressions of Castles, Drawings of Welsh and English Castles'', exh. cat., with introductory essay by Peter Wakelin & poem by Regina Derieva. Globegallery, Hay-on-Wye, Hereford, 2002 * Philip Vann, ''Face to Face: British Self-Portraits in the Twentieth Century''. Sansom & Company, 2004 * ''Dennis Creffield: a retrospective'', exh. cat., with foreword by Howard Jacobson and interview by Lynda Morris, Flowers East, London, 2005 * John Russell Taylor. "Back to the drawing board", ''The Times'', 23 March 2005 * ''Dennis Creffield. Jerusalem'', exh. cat., James Hyman Fine Art, London, 2011 * Andrew Lambirth, ‘England's most closely guarded secret’, ''The Spectator'', 24 September 2011 * Neil Roberts, ''A Lucid Dreamer: The Life of Peter Redgrove'', Random House, 2012 * Marina Vaizey, ''Figure to Ground: Five Figurative Artists: Frank Auerbach, Leon Kossoff, Dennis Creffield, John Virtue, Celia Paul'', Cv Publications, 2012 * "Dennis Creffield", ''Wall Street International'' magazine, 21 February 2014 * Philip Dodd, "Tribute paid to Dennis Creffield", ''Antiques Trade Gazette'', Issue 2350, 14 July 2018 * Rafael Pic, "Dennis Creffield, le peintre des cathédrales", ''Le Quotidien de l'Art'', Édition N°1539, 16 juillet 2018

References

External links

Official artist website
*
Obituary in ''The Guardian'' by Oliver BascianoObituary in ''The Telegraph''

Tate Gallery Catalogue
{{DEFAULTSORT:Creffield, Dennis 1931 births 2018 deaths Painters from London Alumni of London South Bank University 20th-century English painters English male painters 21st-century English painters Modern painters Borough Group Academics of Leeds Arts University English contemporary artists 20th-century English male artists 21st-century English male artists

Early life and education

Work and commissions

See also

Films

Selected bibliography

References

External links