Patrick Procktor

Born 12 March 1936, in Dublin; died 29 August 2003, in London.

Painter.

When he was young, Patrick Procktor settled in London. Having studied Russian and served in the Royal Navy, in 1958 he entered the Slade School of Fine Art, London, where he was influenced by Keith Vaughan. He graduated from the Slade in 1962, and travelled to Greece and Italy. He held his first solo show at the Redfern Gallery in London in 1963, which was a total sell-out. The pattern of travel followed by successful exhibitions (in England, Europe, the USA, Hong Kong and Japan) continued thereafter: he visited America in 1965 with David Hockney, Norman Stevens and Colin Self and subsequently travelled to North Africa, India, Nepal, China, Egypt and Greece. In 1983 he was commissioned by the Imperial War Museum to paint the army in Belize and in 1985 he was asked by the British Council to record the Queen's visit to Portugal. He was elected to the Royal Academy in 1996. In 1999 a significant number of his works were lost in a studio fire.

He did not accept either total abstraction or the academic formula of realism, and in his work he combines realism and imagination. His early paintings were figurative, strongly coloured and heavily painted, but over the years he began to concentrate on landscape and townscapes, and to use increasingly translucent paint effects; eventually he focused more on watercolours.

"PROCKTOR, Patrick." In Benezit Dictionary of Artists. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/benezit/B00146367 (accessed May 2, 2012).