Lot 499: Leslie Duxbury (British, 1921-2001)

Leslie Duxbury (British, 1921-2001)
Jetty
inscribed and titled (to reverse)
oils on canvas
34 x 51cm.

Exhibited:
Haworth Art Gallery, Accrington, Leslie Duxbury: Paintings, Prints and Drawings, 2003.

Born in Accrington in 1921, Leslie Duxbury studied at Accrington Grammer School and the Accrington School of Arts. In the autumn of 1941, Duxbury gained a placed at the Royal College of Art, under Percy Jowett, which moved to Ambleside in the Lake District during World War II. Although called up to army service in 1941, he was invalided out of the service in 1943 and returned to the RCA. In 1945 he moved with the RCA back to London.

By the 1950s he was considered amongst the Kitchen Sink School of painters, favouring the gritty subject matter of working-class life. When 'The Forgotton Fifties' was launched at the Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield, in 1984, a seminal exhibition in which the Kitchen Sinkers were strongly represented, Duxbury's canvas Tenement Dwellers was illustrated in the catalogue. It had originally been acquired by the Arts Council in 1956.

Duxbury also started part-time teaching, at the Camberwell and Hammersmith schools of art as well as the Borough Polytechnic. He also taught at Kingston-upon-Thames School of Art until retirement, by which time he was in charge of printmaking.