The Unseen Work of Ron Embleton

About

The man needs little introduction to the aficionado of post-war British illustration. At the time of his sudden death from a heart attack in 1988, aged only fifty-seven, Ron Embleton was one of the best known comic and historical illustrators at work in this country, with a reputation that stretched far beyond these shores. His obituary in The Times justly described him as ‘a grand master of his art.’ Less well known, however, was his equally energetic career as a painter. In fact, being a painter had been his life’s ambition – his ‘driving force,’ as his daughter Gillian puts it. 

In 1946 Embleton went to the South-East Essex Technical College and School of Art. There he had the incredible good fortune to be taught by David Bomberg, one of the greatest – though at that time sadly under-appreciated – British artists of the twentieth century. As well as Embleton, his students would include such significant figures of post-war British painting as Frank Auerbach, Leon Kossoff, Peter Prendergast, Miles Richmond, Denis Creffield and Dorothy Mead. Messum's are delighted to be staging the first retrospective of Ron Embleton's oil paintings in 'The Unseen Works of Ron Embleton'.