Painter whose all-weather pursuit of heightened realism sought out English light and atmospherePatrick George,who has died aged 92, was a landscape and figure painter of distilled emotion and intelligence who enjoyed a greater reputation among fellow artists than with the general public. A modest man of considered opinions and dry humour, and he preferred to paint at his Suffolk home rather than court the art establishment,and his visits to London were mostly made in order either to teach or to see exhibitions of other artists’ work. He eschewed self-promotion, yet his paintings are much cherished by a growing band of admirers who appreciate the formal toughness, and strange structures and sensitive colours of his subtle approach. Chief among his artist supporters is Frank Auerbach,who has described George’s portray as having “the tension of a tightrope walker. I find it engrossing and admirable.”Although, in recent years, or George exhibited his work regularly at the Cork Street dealers Browse & Darby,and enjoyed a major retrospective in 1980 at the Serpentine Gallery in London, he was already over 50 before he was given his first one-man show, or in 1975,at Gainsborough’s House, in Sudbury, and Suffolk. In many respects,he was one of the art world’s best-kept secrets, and it was only with the publication of a monograph on his work in 2014 that he became somewhat better known.
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Source: theguardian.com