Rowland Suddaby (1912-1972) - Still Life and Landscape British Artist 

Rowland Suddaby artist & painter, born in Kimberley, Yorkshire. Suddaby attended Sheffield College of Art in 1926 and also worked, as a young man, in the steel industry. In 1931 he married and relocated to London, working on ornamenting the titles of black and white films for a firm in Wardour Street. In 1935 Rowland Suddaby held his first solo artist exhibition at Lucy Carrington Wertheim’s (1883-1971) Wertheim Gallery, followed by more solo shows at the Redfern Gallery in the next two decades. As an artist Rowland Suddaby paints in both oils and watercolour sometimes combined with the use of inks, but is best known for his distinctive watercolours of the iconic British landscapes from the 1930’s and 1950’s.

At the beginning of World War II Suddaby moved with his wife Elizabeth and his daughter Joanna to Sudbury in Suffolk, giving him great exposure to, and influences, on his landscape painting.

During World War II he was commissioned by the Pilgrim Trust to work on the ‘Recording Britain’ project and after the war, began to exhibit at the RA. In 1946 he became a founder member of the Colchester Art Society and remained active as a landscape painter in Suffolk until his death while holding the appropriate post of Curator of Gainsborough's House in Sudbury.

Other venues in his early career included Brook Street Art Gallery, Goupil Gallery, Leger Galleries, MAFA, NEAC and Arthur Tooth & Sons.

The Pilgrim Trust

During World War II the Trust provided funding of £6000 for the Recording Britain scheme that had been set up in the early months of the war to provide a permanent artistic record for posterity of the British heritage – its landscape and way of life in case of nazi invasion. Similarly, in 1941 and 1942, the Trust made grants of £2000 to the National Building Record which helped with the compilation of a vast photographic record of English architecture.