Michael Ayrton Gould was born on 20 February 1921 at St Pancras, London. His parents were the poet and literary critic Gerald Gould and the socialist politician Barbara Ayrton. Michael’s childhood education was much disrupted through illness, but he was inspired by works seen on his European travels to take up drawing and painting. His artistic career commenced with him studying drawings at the Albertina, Vienna. He then travelled in Italy and France. He studied briefly at Heatherley’s School of Art and the St John’s Wood School of Art, before taking himself off to Paris, where he shared a studio with the painter John Minton. Together they visited Eugène Berman and Giorgio de Chirico. Ayrton was first associated with the English Neo-Romantic movement, as he was influenced by the style of Pavel Tchelitchew, Henry Moore and Graham Sutherland. He took his mother’s maiden name professionally and commenced practising commercial art, sharing a studio with John Minton in Paris in 1939, where they studied with Eugene Berman. He also worked in Chirico’s studio and in 1938 went to Les Baux with Minton and Michael Middleton. Ayrton worked with Minton on designing costumes and sets for the 1942 John Gielgud production of Macbeth. An exhibition of their designs play was held at the Leicester Galleries in London. Ayrton was invalided out of the RAF in 1942, then taught drawing and theatre design at the Camberwell School of Art 1942-44. His first one-man show was at the Redfern Gallery in 1943. Ayrton gave up teaching when he was appointed art critic of The Spectator in 1944 and produced copious quantities of art criticism. He illustrated a number of books and was author of British Drawings (1946); Hogarth’s Drawings (1948); Tittivulus (1953) and Golden Sections (1957). He also edited the book Aspects of British Art (1947). His was a familiar voice on the BBC and he was a member of the ‘Brains Trust’. He alienated a number of artistic colleagues through his unremitting hostility to Picasso’s art. As the stricken painter Wyndham Lewis commenced the last lap of his life’s journey, Ayrton collaborated with him and illustrated several of his books. He was commissioned by Lewis’s publishers, Methuen and Co., to paint his portrait and the result may be found in the Tate. Ayrton recalled a visit to an exhibition at the Redfern Gallery, Cork Street, London in 1949: ‘I wandered in to find two silent figures contemplating the exhibits. One of these was Mr T S Eliot dressed with quiet elegance in a blue business suit, stooped like a benevolent osprey and gazing intently at Lewis’s early self-portrait. This imposing picture shows the artist gazing stonily out from the canvas and wearing a large, fierce hat. The sole other occupant of the room was Mr Lewis himself, wearing a large, fierce hat and gazing stonily at his own portrait of Mr Eliot, a picture in which the poet is dressed with quiet elegance in a blue business suit.’ In the 1940s and 50s Ayrton visited Italy and Greece several times and was much influenced by the Italian Quattrocento. In 1952 he married Elizabeth Evelyn Walshe (1910-91), former wife of the author Nigel Balchin. Ayrton began to sculpt in bronze in the early 1950’s, receiving advice from Henry Moore and visited Cumae in southern Italy in 1956-57 and Greece in 1958, turning to Greek myth as his principal source of inspiration, particularly the legends of Daedelus and Icarus, the Minotaur and the image of the maze. He was fascinated by the myth of the Cretan labyrinth, a myth which he addressed time and again in his work, going so far as to construct a version for the wealthy American, Armand Erpf, at Arkville in the Catskill Mountains (1968-69). Copies of his bronze figure Icarus III may be found at the Smithsonian Institution Space Museum, Washington, DC and standing in front of St Paul’s Cathedral in London.  Ayrton died of a heart attack on 17 November 1975, aged 54, at Hampstead, London. Retrospective exhibitions of his work were held at Wakefield in 1949 and the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1955. His work may be found in the collections of the Tate, the National Portrait Gallery, London, Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Fry Art Gallery, Essex. Ayrton wrote: ‘To practice an art is primarily to discover one’s relationship with reality … an attempt to find what in essence is real [and] communicate part of this experience to others and so enlarge their experience.’ The author and collector J C Leissring would write: ‘There is a peculiar mystery about Michael Ayrton that I am unable to unravel from this position in space and time. It may come to pass that at some future time I will encounter just the person who will tell me why Aryton has not achieved the kind of artistic reputation he clearly deserves and why he seems to be hidden in the cracks of art history. This will likely not always be so.’