Euan Uglow was born on 10 March 1932 in London. He attended Strand School, before studying at Camberwell School of Arts from 1948 to 1950 where his tutors included Victor Pasmore, Lawrence Gowing, John Minton, Kenneth Martin and William Coldstream. Both Coldstream and the painters of the Euston Road School were considerable influences. Uglow’s early figurative style adapted a form of planar drawing derived from Alberto Giacometti’s work of the 1920s and applied to a Classical structure, derived from Paul Cézanne When Coldstream left to teach at the Slade in 1951, Uglow transferred there too. In 1954, as a conscientious objector, he did not serve in the armed forces, but spent two years engaged in building work and farming. From 1961, he taught part-time at the Slade. With a meticulous method of painting directly from life, Uglow frequently took months or years to complete a painting. Planes are articulated very precisely, edges are sharply defined, and colours are differentiated with great subtlety. His type of realism has its basis in geometry, starting with the proportion of the canvas. Uglow preferred that the canvas be a square, a golden rectangle, or a rectangle of exact root value, as is the case with the Root Five Nude (1976). He then carried out careful measurements at every stage of painting, a method Coldstream had imparted to him and which is identified with the painters of the Euston Road School. Standing before the subject to be painted, Uglow registered measurements by means of a metal instrument of his own design (derived from a modified music stand); with one eye closed and with the arm of the instrument against his cheek, keeping the calibrations at a constant distance from the eye, the artist could take the measure of an object or interval to compare against other objects or intervals he saw before him. Such empirical measurements enable an artist to paint what the eye sees without the use of conventional perspective. The surfaces of Uglow’s paintings carry many small horizontal and vertical markings, where he recorded these coordinates, so that they could be verified against reality. Uglow’s principal concern was to render nature in art and he always saw this system of measurement as a means to an end; his work in fact arose out of deep emotions. Colour was fundamental to his understanding. Matisse and the Venetians influenced him all his artistic life along with many others, although perhaps Cézanne, Poussin and Ingres were closest to his heart. Uglow’s power lay in the calm and assured way that the motifs hold their place on the canvas and the rich tonal compositions. He gave the same attention to arranging a still-life or a model’s pose, as he would later give to applying paint on canvas, combining mathematical calculation with careful observation. There is a strong conceptual element in Uglow’s work, with each picture regarded as a specific project, with clearly defined aims. Uglow produced fewer than 400 pictures in his lifetime, the best-known of which, were his female nudes. Informed opinion has it that Uglow was a difficult painter to sit for. Having decided what he wanted to paint, he would pose his life models in difficult positions, using plumblines and chalk markers to maintain them in position, insisting on absolute stillness, while he painted. He was notorious for keeping his female models in excruciating poses for years and he could be unforgiving of those who failed him. One model claimed to have spent seven years holding a pose for him, (Uglow said it was six, because she was off sick for 12 months). Uglow’s perfectionism was responsible for a work rate which at his busiest, saw him complete only two canvasses a year. He once said: ‘While I am painting, my models often go through a cycle of personal events. When one model first arrived, she had a boyfriend. Later she married, and by the time I was done, she was divorced.’ Small, wiry, bearded, bespectacled – and inevitably in sandals, Uglow lived a garret-like, spartan lifestyle in the studio-home he occupied for almost four decades. He cooked on a 1920s gas stove and slept on an iron bedstead. In 1982 he was invited by Stass Paraskos to spend some time at the Cyprus College of Art, which resulted in the production of landscapes with Cypriot colours and themes. Uglow died of cancer at his home in Wandsworth, London on 31 August 2000. Catherine Lampert’s book Euan Uglow: The Complete Paintings was published in 2007.