Leonard Rosoman RA
1913 - 2012
Leonard Rosoman
Leonard Rosoman (1913–2012) was a British painter, illustrator, muralist and teacher. Born in London, he studied at King Edward VII School of Art in Newcastle, the Royal Academy Schools and the Central School of Arts and Crafts. His early career combined painting with illustration and commercial work, before the Second World War brought him wider recognition.
Rosoman served in the Auxiliary Fire Service during the Blitz and was subsequently appointed an Official War Artist, serving with the Royal Marines in the Pacific. His wartime paintings established many of the qualities that remained central to his work: strong draughtsmanship, unusual viewpoints, shifting perspectives and an underlying sense of unease. He later worked extensively as an illustrator, mural painter and portraitist.
He taught at Camberwell, Edinburgh College of Art and, from 1957, the Royal College of Art, where his students included David Hockney and Peter Blake. Major commissions included murals for the Festival of Britain, Lambeth Palace and the Royal Academy at Burlington House. He was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1960, became a Royal Academician in 1969, and was appointed OBE in 1981.
His work is held by major collections including Tate, the National Portrait Gallery, the Imperial War Museum and the Royal Academy of Arts.
Available
A Winter Landscape
POA
“I paint the things that bewilder and startle me - I like to be puzzled and the painting should be difficult - if it’s easy I scrap it.”
“Within his consistency of style and approach, he was capable of great versatility, and however often he might approach a particular area of subject matter, he always aimed to do so in a new way. Consequently the body of his work resembled nobody else’s, and was in its own quiet way one of the most remarkable and distinctive in twentieth century British art.”