William Menzies Coldstream was born at Belford, Northumberland on 28 February 1908. He was the son of a doctor and grew up in north London. He left school at the age of twelve owing to illness and was privately educated. He attended the Slade School 1926-29 and formed friendships with Claude Rogers and Rodrigo Moynihan. In 1933 he held a joint exhibition at the Cooling Galleries with H E du Plessis. Sponsored by the London Artists’ Association he first showed with the London Group in 1929, became a member in 1933 and showed sporadically until the late 1960s. In 1931, he married Nancy Sharp, a fellow Slade painter; they had two daughters before their separation in 1939. In 1934 he was elected to the London Group. His concern about the role of the artist in society and his financial problems prompted him to join the GPO Film Unit under John Grierson and he worked as an assistant to Alberto Cavalcanti. In 1935 he directed a short colour film, The King’s Stamp. He worked on the film, Coal Face, with the poet W H Auden in 1936. He continued to paint, however, and an annual stipend from Kenneth Clark (in response to the Plan for Artists that Coldstream wrote with Graham Bell) enabled him to return to full-time painting in 1937. Later that year, he, with Rogers and Victor Pasmore, co-founded the School of Drawing and Painting at 12 Fitzroy Street, which later moved to the Euston Road. Though he became principally a portrait painter, Coldstream’s continued political commitment was witnessed by his 1938 painting trip with Bell to Bolton, Lancashire as part of Mass Observation’s social survey of Britain. In 1940 he enlisted in the army and trained as a gunner in the Royal Artillery, later being commissioned as a camouflage officer. He was appointed an official war artist in 1943. He travelled to Egypt that year and to Italy in 1944. He returned home in July 1945 and joined several friends as a tutor at Camberwell that. He became Head of Painting in 1948, but was appointed Slade Professor of Fine Art, University College, London the following year. Coldstream then became a grand panjandrum of the arts world, being appointed Trustee of both the National Gallery (1948-63) and the Tate Gallery (1949-63), a director of the Royal Opera House (1957-62) and chairman of the British Film Institute (1964-71). He chaired the Art Panel of the Arts Council of Great Britain (1953-62) and was Vice Chairman of the Council (1962-70). As Chairman of the National Advisory Council on Art Education (1958-71) he is said to have reshaped British art education through what became known as the First and Second Coldstream Reports (1960 and 1970). Coldstream was appointed CBE in 1952 and knighted in 1956. In 1954 he spent summer in Italy and France with John Rake, met Auden in Ischia and saw the Cézanne exhibition in Paris. In 1955 he arranged for Kenneth Clark to give a series of lectures on the nude at the Slade. In 1965 he was elected to the Society of Dilettanti, and shortly afterwards became Painter to the Society. Coldstream was committed to painting directly from life. His deft, sketching, underdrawing and sensitive brushwork have become synonymous with the Euston Road School. His type of realism had its basis in a system of careful measurement. The surfaces of his paintings carry many small horizontal and vertical markings, where he recorded these coordinates so that they could be verified against reality. His famously slow working methods restricted production to three or four paintings a year. As a result, he rarely showed his work. Coldstream married his former model Monica Hoyer, in 1961 and they had three children. In 1971 Rodrigo Moynihan painted Coldstream’s portrait and the following year, Anthony d’Offay became his dealer. Coldstream retired from the Slade in 1975 and was succeeded by his former pupil Lawrence Gowing, whose successors, Patrick George, and Bernard Cohen were also members of the so-called ‘Coldstream Guard’. In 1974 he commenced painting the first of ten panoramic views of Westminster from Room 1702 of the Department of the Environment at Marsham Street in Victoria, London. In 1984 he had a one-man exhibition at the Anthony d’Offay Gallery. Although ill, he attended the private view. He then became unable to paint, due failing health. In 1986 Sir William entered sheltered accommodation at the Guinness Trust, Primrose Hill and died on 18 February 1987. The Tate Gallery has several of his paintings.