Ross Hickling (1918-)

An amateur artist born in Swinton near Rotherham, Yorkshire. After World War II he relocated to Northumberland where he joined the fire service on Tynside and remained in that job until the mid-1970's. After retirement, he began to paint in earnest and exhibited at the Royal Academy and the Royal Scottish Academy, Shipley Art Gallery and the Laing Art Gallery in the Artists of the Northern Counties exhibitions. His early work was influenced by the Euston Road School.

The only exhibited artwork in the RA we can find was in 1955 Titled (161) Nude in Gallery No.3

The Chronical Live in 2004 wrote an article on a retrospective organised by his friends.

‘Friends and admirers of the artist Ross Hickling have organised a retrospective exhibition in his honour - and it does give a clear indication of why they are admirers as well as friends.

Strictly speaking, Ross was an amateur painter. But he studied under Victor Pasmore, Lawrence Gowing and Roger de Grey, luminaries of the celebrated Euston Road School, when they were teaching in the fine art department at Newcastle University (then King's College, Durham).

In the work currently on display at Newcastle Arts Centre you can see their influence. A description of the Euston Road School, set up by a group of London-based artists just before the war, accompanies the pictures in the exhibition.

Ross was born in Yorkshire but married a North-East girl after the war and they settled in Newcastle. Realising he would find it difficult to make a living as an artist, Ross joined the Fire Brigade because the shift working gave him time to paint.

His boss became aware of his artistic skills and put him in charge of a new visual aids department where he produced publicity and training materials. He also produced a jocular in-house magazine for the North-East brigades and designed a badge for the Tyne and Wear Fire Brigade.

Inspired by Ross, several other firemen took up painting as a hobby, as well as contributing cartoons to the magazine.

In 1957 Ross and a few other artists set up the Univision Gallery in the basement of the Royal Court Grill in Newcastle's Bigg Market. According to Mike Tilley, who runs Newcastle Arts Centre, they struck up a fruitful relationship with a gallery on the Parisian Left Bank, exchanging collections of paintings.

The Bigg Market gallery is long gone but Ross's paintings hang on many walls around the region.

A representative selection of his work has been gathered for this exhibition, including a 1952 self-portrait and a painting of Jesus baptising John from a series called The Life of Christ, done for the parish church in Earsdon, North Tyneside, in 1997. Ross is unlikely to see the show. Now aged 86 and a widower, he moved not long ago from his home in Monkseaton to Devon to be near family members.’