Death Of Well Known Artist William Bowyer

An acclaimed landscape and portrait artist and Chiswick resident for over sixty years

The death has taken place of the artist William Bowyer, who lived and worked in Chiswick for sixty-seven years. He died on March 1st, aged eighty-eight.

William Bowyer was a contemporary British portrait and landscape painter and worked in the tradition of English figurative painting.

His style was influenced by English landscape painters Constable and Turner. Much of his work was inspired by the river Thames near Hammersmith and the coastline in Suffolk. Two of his portraits, of former miner's union leader, Arthur Scargill, and cricketer Viv Richards, were acquired by the National Portrait Gallery.

Born in Leek, Staffordshire in 1926, William Bowyer studied at Burslem School of Art and the Royal College of Art, London, where he was taught by Carel Weight and Ruskin Spear. He became Head of Fine Art at Maidstone College of Art and was elected an associate of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1973 and elected full member in 1981.

He was a member of the Royal Watercolour Society, the Royal Society of Portrait Painters and, for thirty years, he was President of the New English Art Club.

Chiswick Eyot by William Bowyer (image courtesy of Bowyer family)

In recent years he divided his time between Chiswick, where he had a studio in Bedford Park and a home in Walberswick, Suffolk. He was a long-time supporter of the St Michael & All Angels Summer Exhibition in Chiswick.

Fellow Academician Ken Howard once said of his work: “The content of his pictures is the artist’s life, whether it be his beloved river at Hammersmith, Walberswick in Suffolk – where he escapes whenever possible – his friends and family, as seen in his strong and challenging portraits, or his life-long love of cricket. Bill Bowyer’s work communicates with us directly. It gives us a way of seeing the world and above all it is life enhancing.”

William Bowyer is survived by his wife Vera and his two sons, Francis and Jason, (both artists) and daughter Emma.

Funeral arrangements will be announced.

March 4, 2015