Fred Cuming RA
1930 - 2022
Fred Cuming
Fred Cuming (1930–2022) was a British landscape painter known for luminous studies of sea, sky and the southern English coast. Born in London, he trained at Sidcup School of Art (1945–49) and the Royal College of Art (1951–55), where he was awarded an Abbey travelling scholarship to Italy.
Cuming painted from observation, often en plein air, then refined in the studio. His aim was to register fleeting light and atmosphere across subjects from Hastings and Rye to Venice. Critics and peers noted his economy of means and colour sensitivity.
Cuming had strong ties to the Royal Academy. Elected Associate in 1969 and Royal Academician in 1974, he exhibited for decades at the RA and across the UK. He was also a long-standing member of the New English Art Club.
His work is held by major collections including the Royal Collection Trust; the National Portrait Gallery, London; the Royal Academy of Arts; the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff; and Brighton & Hove Museums.
Available
Garden, Iden
£4,500
“A truly visionary painter, Fred Cuming has developed the most delicate, painstaking descriptive techniques. He belongs to the great descriptive tradition of English Romantic landscape painting which has flourished for two centuries since Turner and Constable.
Yet what Cuming really does, is to re-invent the world through colour. It is both a recognisable place, which can be visited; and yet a completely transformed object of poetic intensity. His world feels as if it has been dreamt, or remembered from a dream, suffused with feelings that can never quite be named.”