Patrick George: painting some of his best work at 91

‘If I see something I like I wish to tell someone else; this… is why I paint.’ Patrick George is 91, still painting ‘some of the best work he’s ever done’, in Andrew Lambirth’s view. ‘His principal aim is to point out, to those of us less well-trained to observe, how marvellous the appearance of things is, and he does this through exquisite landscapes, figure and still-life paintings, of unassuming but stringent beauty.’

After four years in the Navy (he commanded a landing craft in the D-Day landings) George went to Camberwell art school where he imbibed the strict measuring technique associated with William Coldstream, which he has continued to use — though not exclusively — throughout his career. He taught at the Slade for 40 years, latterly as its director, but has lived for most of his life ‘a rustic existence’ in Suffolk, in the ordered, ‘working landscape’ that he has made his principal subject — ‘doing all the things that go with this kind of rural life.