Lot 263: FREDERICK APPLEYARD 1874-1963

signed in a cartouche l.r.: FRED APPLEYARD; inscribed on an old label attached to the stretcher: Fred Appleyard Esq/ 18 Kensington Place

oil on canvas

91.5 by 137 cm. ; 36 by 54 in.

Royal Academy, 1918, no. 637

Appleyard's work is well-known to anyone who regularly eats at the refreshment room of the Royal Academy, where his imposing allegorical mural of one of the seasons graces the walls. He also decorated rooms at Pickering Church, St. Marks on North Audley Street and at Nottingham General Hospital and was skilled at working on a large scale, as the present work testifies.

Fred Appleyard was born in Middlesborough on the 9 September 1874 and studied at the Scarborough School of Art, under Albert Strange and later at the Royal College of Art and the Royal Academy Schools. He exhibited from 1900 at the Academy and in 1915 his painting A Secret was purchased by the Chantry Bequest (Tate Britain). He lived from 1900 to 1918 in London and worked during World War I at Woolwich Arsenal. He later moved to Alresford in Hampshire, where he lived for many years until his death on 22 February 1963.