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Bernard Fleetwood-Walker R.A. Biography |
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| Cataloguing and
content by Nicola Walker, nicola.walker@fleetwood-walker.co.uk Website, database and additional photography by Quirk, www.quirknet.com © All Rights Reserved |
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He was educated at Barford Street School and at King Edward's Grammar School, Five Ways, Birmingham and went on to train in the arts as a silver- and goldsmith. Through working as a modeller and on low relief he developed an interest in painting and furthered his studies at the Birmingham School of Art and Crafts, as well as in London and under Fleury in Paris.
the war years as wasted time.
Returning to Birmingham after the war he married Marjorie White ('Mickey') in 1920 and had two sons, Colin and Guy. He taught, first at King Edward's Grammar School, Aston where in addition to his talents he designed remarkably avant-garde scenery for the school plays, and then, from 1929 as a gifted, respected and influential lecturer at the Birmingham College of Art under H. Holden. Having been trained at a time when strong drawing and a high level of technical skill was the pre-requisite of a successful career, he excelled as a draughtsman and through his teaching extolled these virtues in others. He encouraged his students to use every sort of medium to hand, doled out fierce criticism, demanded high standards and, at the same time, lectured perceptively on contemporary art movements. He worked prodigiously during this time, exhibiting at the Royal Academy from 1925, developing his abilities as a practising artist and quickly gaining a reputation not only as a painter of portraits and children but also for the large figurative paintings of the 1930s, many of which are now in public collections.
He had a one-man exhibition at the Ruskin Gallery, Birmingham in 1927, but showed his work primarily at the societies to which he regularly sent his work. He was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1946 and a Royal Academician in 1956 ‐ showing a total of 147 works there over the years
. He was a member of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, the Royal Institute of Oil Painters and the New English Art Club. Always extremely loyal to his hometown, he declared he was proud to be the only Royal Academician from Birmingham who still lived and worked there, and was particularly pleased to have been elected President of the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists (RBSA) in 1950. In 1946 Fleetwood-Walker was elected to the Royal Watercolour Society consequently fulfilling the conditions of Cornelius Varley's will ‐ that the next artist in his family to be a member should inherit Varley's studio collection.
After his first wife died, he married Dr Peggy Frazer in 1939 and continued to work and teach in Birmingham through to 1956. Each year he would take a group of students from Birmingham to sketch in Cornwall and was a member of The St Ives Society of Artists (1936-1949). He also went on sketching tours on the continent and exhibited at the Paris Salon winning both bronze and silver medals. He finally moved to Chelsea so that he could devote more time to the students at the Royal Academy School where he was Assistant Keeper. He died in London on January 30th 1965.
In his finished oils this extent of ability and the progression from the early decorative works to the later more fluid style, where his intention was "to see the whole subject in a flash" can be demonstrated in a comparison of Repose, a portrait of his first wife Mickey in 1925, and At the Mirror, his second wife Peggy, painted in
1944.