- Peter Prendergast (artist)
Peter Prendergast (
27 October 1946 -14 January 2007 ) was a Welshlandscape painter. After the death ofSir Kyffin Williams in September 2006, he was recognised as the leadinglandscape painter in Wales. ["The Independent" obituary."]Early life
Prendergast was born in
Abertridwr , a mining village in the Aber valley nearCaerphilly inGlamorgan . His father was a Roman Catholic fromIreland who sought work as acoal miner inMaesteg in south Wales after the1916 Easter Rising . His two older brothers attended the localgrammar school , but he was sent to the localsecondary modern , where his art teacher, Gomer Lewis, recognised his artistic talent. With support from the County art adviser, Leslie Moore, he won a County art scholarship to study at theCardiff School of Art in 1962, despite having no formal academic qualifications.He moved to the
Slade School of Fine Art in 1964, where he studied underSir William Coldstream , Robyn Denny,Francis Bacon ,Jeff Camp , andEuan Uglow . His tutor wasFrank Auerbach . He won the Nettleship Prize for Figure Painting in 1967. He met his future wife, Lesley Riding, in his last year at the Slade, and they were married in 1967.Career
He taught part-time in a school for one year after leaving the Slade, and then studied for a M.A. at
Reading University withTerry Frost andClaude Rogers with a view to becoming a teacher. There, he met fellow student and landscape painterLen Tabner who remained a close friend in later life.He and his wife moved to Bethesda in 1969, a village near Bangor and close to the
Penrhyn Quarry . He taught part-time atLiverpool School of Art until 1974, then at a local school, and then atColeg Menai , but he concentrated more on developing as an artist. He specialised in paintings of the Penrhyn slate quarry, which he described as "the biggest man-made hole in Europe, likeBreughel 'sTower of Babel , but in reverse", ["The Guardian" obituary.] and ofSnowdonia . His early works have a bruqueExpressionist style, almostCubist . He painted similar views of the towers inManhattan on a visit toNew York in 1993.He won prizes at the
National Eisteddfod in 1975 and 1977. Examples of his paintings are owned by theContemporary Art Society of Wales , and theTate Gallery . For some years his work was shown by Agnew's gallery in London, culminating in a touring exhibition; the foreword to the exhibition catalogue was written by SisterWendy Beckett , who described him as "a superb colourist and a master of form".A "50th Birthday Exhibition" was held at the
Boundary Gallery in London in 1996, and a retrospective of his works toured galleries in Wales in 2006, including theWelsh Museum of Modern Art atMachynlleth . "The Painter's Quarry", a collection of critical essays on his work, was also published in 2006; a television profile with the same title appeared onBBC2 .After suffering from poor health in 2006, he died suddenly from a heart attack while walking with his wife near his home in
Deiniolen , nearCaernarfon inGwynedd . He was survived by his wife, and their two sons and two daughters.Notes
References
* [http://news.independent.co.uk/people/obituaries/article2160057.ece Obituary] , "
The Independent ",17 January 2007
* [http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,,1995745,00.html Obituary] , "The Guardian ",22 January 2007
* [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=01AVYEPGTGA3XQFIQMGCFFOAVCBQUIV0?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/news/2007/01/20/db2002.xml Obituary] , "The Daily Telegraph ",22 January 2007
* [http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article1449202.ece Obituary] , "The Times ",28 February 2007
*Obituary, "New Welsh Review ", Summer 2007, pp 54-55External links
* [http://www.artwales.com/PRENDERGAST%20Peter/PETER%20PRENDERGAST.htm Martin Tinney Gallery] (recent paintings)
* [http://www.welshartsarchive.org.uk/article5.htm Art Cymru]
* [http://www.rwa.org.uk/members.html Royal West of England Academy]
* [http://www.welshartsarchive.org.uk/galleries/peter_prendergast.htm A gallery of his work] fromArt Cymru
* [http://www.boundarygallery.com/prendergast.html Works] exhibited at theBoundary Gallery
* [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/6263187.stm Tributes paid to 'unique' artist] ,BBC News ,15 January 2007
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