JOHN WHITTALL

John Whittall studied at Camberwell School of Art and Crafts and the Royal Academy Schools. His work has encompassed portraiture, still life and landscape. Having worked in oil for many years, he has recently been focussing on watercolour landscapes near his home on the Surrey/Sussex border.

Whittall has works in permanent collections in the National Portrait Gallery and Westminster Abbey.

“Leaving art school I remember a tutor asking me what I planned to do, "Paint" I replied and that's been my life ever since. To be honest it hasn't been easy but that sense of excitement whenever I face a new subject has never left me and I still regard myself as on a journey of discovery.”

The critic Brian Sewell wrote: “Whittall’s work will never be bought by the Tate Gallery, for it lacks the thrilling quality of elephant dung and the dead horse, and deals with gentle subjects long familiar in art that discreetly please as lessons in seeing beyond that familiarity, touching us with nostalgia, but never sentimental. These paintings will never be the stuff of fervid controversy in incomprehensible art jargon; they are images with which to live in peace as they become old friends.”