Synopsis
The importance of Evelyn Dunbar (1906-1960) in the history of British 20th century art is continually being reassessed and belatedly recognised. A gifted draughtswoman: youthful prodigy; brilliant student at the Royal College of Art under Sir William Rothenstein and a galaxy of teaching staff including Allan Gwynne-Jones, Alan Sorrell and Charles Mahoney; principal muralist at Brockley School; book illustrator; devout Christian Scientist; official World War 2 artist, the only woman artist to be salaried throughout the war; post-war allegorist and much-loved teacher; subtly insistent feminist; devoted plantswoman, gardener and inspired advocate of 'green' values; warm and witty but self-effacing personality with many accomplishments including, unexpectedly, rock-climbing and playing the banjo; but above all a very individual artist of spirited imagination and consummate technique, whose work, which hangs in all major UK galleries and several overseas, defies ready classification.
Dunbar's nephew Christopher Campbell-Howes gives a sparkling, scholarly and measured account of her life and work in a richly illustrated book that combines biography, memoir and catalogue raisonné.
About the Author
Fascinated in his childhood and youth by his aunt, the artist Evelyn Dunbar, Christopher Campbell-Howes has devoted several years of his retirement from teaching in Scotland to the writing of this definitive biography and memoir of a largely undiscovered but immensely rewarding British artist. Born in England during World War 2, whose women's home front activities were so tellingly expressed by Dunbar, Christopher Campbell-Howes has brought to bear an impressive but user-friendly scholarship to his biography, aided by a sharp acumen for research. The first draft of Evelyn Dunbar: A Life in Painting was almost print-ready when the discovery was made in 2013 of Dunbar's residual studio, hidden in a Kentish oast house since her early death in 1960 at the age of 53: some 800 pieces covering her entire career came to light, plus a wealth of documents and photographs, a once-in-a-lifetime biographer's benison. Christopher Campbell-Howes set to work again, with the result that he has accounted for some 80% of Dunbar's work . Author of several books about the south of France, where he lives, Christopher Campbell-Howes divides his time between writing, composing and making music, building drystone walls and cultivating strawberries.
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