BIOGRAPHIES OF BRITISH ARTISTS

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BIOGRAPHIES OF BRITISH ARTISTS

Edited by Mark Quinlan

KASHDAN, JOHN

John Erhart Kashdan was born in London on 12 February 1917. His father was a Russian refugee, his mother was English and he grew up in straitened circumstances. Kashdan decided at the age of 12 that he wanted to be an artist, and leaving school at 14, attended Charles Genge’s art classes at the Working [...]

KAUFFMANN, ANGELICA

Maria Anna Catherina Angelica Kauffmann was born at Chur in the Grisons, Switzerland in 1741. She was the daughter of Johann Joseph Kauffmann, a successful decorative painter, who gave her lessons in both music and visual art. She lived in Italy for three years as a child, painting precociously. When she was about twelve, the [...]

KEATING, TOM

Thomas Patrick Keating was born at Lewisham in south London on 1 March 1917. He was the son of a house painter and had a fairly grim working class childhood. He studied at the Croydon School of Art and at Camberwell. During the Second World War, he served with Naval Intelligence. He then became a [...]

KELLY, SIR GERALD

Gerald Festus Kelly was born in London on 9 April 1879. His sister, Rose Edith Kelly, was briefly married to the serial nutcase and occultist Aleister Crowley (1875-1947). Gerald was educated at Cambridge University, later living and studying art in Paris under the Canadian Impressionist painter James Wilson Morrice (1865-1924). Whistler was one of his [...]

KEMP-WELCH, LUCY

Lucy Elizabeth Kemp-Welch was born at Poole in Dorset on 20 June 1869, where her father Edwin Kemp-Welch was a solicitor in the firm of Watt and Kemp-Welch. Shortly thereafter, the Kemp-Welch family moved to Bournemouth and it was soon observed that Lucy was fond of animals. Her father held to the belief that young [...]

KENNINGTON, ERIC

Eric Henri Kennington was born in Chelsea on 12 March 1888, son of the painter Thomas Benjamin Kennington. He was educated at St Paul’s School, the Lambeth School of Art and the City and Guilds School, Kennington. He initially commenced his artistic career as painter, being strongly influenced by the Italian Primitives and Sandro Botticelli. [...]

KENNINGTON, THOMAS BENJAMIN

Thomas Benjamin Kennington was born on 7 April 1856 at Grimsby in Lincolnshire. He studied at the Liverpool School of Art, at the Royal College of Art and at the Académie Julian in Paris. He then settled at Chelsea in London, where he enjoyed a successful career and taught his son Eric, who would turn [...]

KENT, WILLIAM

William Kent was born at Bridlington in Yorkshire in 1685. He commenced his artistic career, as a sign and coach painter and was encouraged to study art, design and architecture by his employer. A group of Yorkshire gentlemen sent Kent for a period of study in Rome, where he met Thomas Coke, later 1st Earl [...]

KINDERSLEY, DAVID

David Guy Barnabas Kindersley was born at Codicote, Hertfordshire on 11 June 1915. He was the son of Major Guy Molesworth Kindersley (a stockbroker and MP) and was the grandson on his mother’s side of the Arts and Crafts potter Sir Edmund Elton. He was educated at St Cyprian’s School, Eastbourne, where he became head [...]

KIRK, THOMAS

Thomas Kirk was born in 1781. He was the son of William Kirk, a native of Edinburgh, who had settled in Newry and later in Cork, where Thomas was born. He studied at the Dublin Society’s Schools where he won prizes in 1797 and 1800. He later worked for the stone-cutter Henry Darley. One of [...]

KITAJ, R B

Ronald Brooks Kitaj (pronounced kit-EYE) was born at Chagrin Falls, near Cleveland, Ohio, USA on 29 October 1932. His Hungarian father, Sigmund Benway, left his mother, Jeanne Brooks, shortly after he was born and they were divorced in 1934. His mother worked in a steel mill and as a teacher. She remarried in 1941, to [...]

KNAPTON, GEORGE

George Knapton was born in London in 1698. He was the son of a prosperous bookseller. Following his training under Jonathan Richardson, he attended the St Martin’s Lane Academy, then run by John Vanderbank. He worked in Rome from 1725 to 1732, where he also pursued his archaeological interests. His report on excavations in Herculaneum [...]

KNELLER, SIR GODFREY

Gottfried Kniller was born in the Baltic port of Lübeck on 8 August 1646. He studied in Leyden and became a pupil of both Ferdinand Bol and Rembrandt in Amsterdam. He worked in Rome and Venice in the early 1670s, painting historical subjects and portraits and later moved to Hamburg. His Elijah (1672; Tate Gallery, [...]

KNIGHT, DAME LAURA

Laura Johnson was born on 4 August 1877 at Long Eaton, Derbyshire. Her father died when she was young and she was brought up in impoverished circumstances. She was taught to draw and paint by her mother, Charlotte Johnson, who gave private tuition to pupils. At the age of 13, Laura entered the Nottingham School [...]

KNIGHTS, WINIFRED

Winifred Knights was born in London in 1899. From her early to her late teens, she is known to have produced a vast number of illustrative drawings, especially inspired by fairy tales such as the Brothers Grimm. She studied at the Slade in the period 1915-17 and 1918-20. Her teachers included Henry Tonks and Frederick [...]

KOKOSHKA, OSKAR

Oskar Kokoschka was born at Pöchlarn on the Danube on 1 March 1886. His father was a Czech and came from a well-known family of Prague goldsmiths. As a boy, Kokoschka wanted to study chemistry, but was recommended for a scholarship at the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts by a teacher who had been [...]

KOSSOWSKI, ADAM

Adam Kossowski was born in Poland in 1905. With the invasion of his country by the Nazis in 1939 and the subsequent partition of Poland between the Russians and the Nazis, he was taken prisoner in Warsaw and sent to a Soviet labour camp in Siberia. He was merely one of many thousands of Poles who [...]

KRAMER, JACOB

Jacob Kramer was born at Klincy in the Ukraine in 1892. His parents were both highly talented individuals. His father, Max studied under the great Ilya Efimovich Repin (1844-1930) at the St Petersburg Fine Art Academy and became a court painter; his mother, Cecilia, was an opera singer and an authority on Russian folk songs [...]

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