| Administrative History | William Brooker was born on 26 June 1918 in Croydon, Surrey. He lived in Notting Hill, London until July 1968 when he moved to South Chailey, near Lewes, Sussex. In April 1973 Brooker moved to Carshalton, Surrey. Brooker died on 8 May 1983.
He studied at the Croydon School of Art in 1936-1939. His training was interrupted by army service during World War II, and his art studies were resumed in 1947 when he took up a place at Chelsea School of Art. During 1947-1949 he was taught by Ruskin Spear, and the moved to study at Goldsmith's School of Art in 1948-1949.
Brooker taught at Bath Academy of Art where he tutored the painter Howard Hodgkin. In 1953 he became Head of Painting at Willesden School of Art and was at Ealing School of Art from 1960. In 1965 Brooker became senior lecturer a the Central School and in April 1969 was appointed Principal at Wimbledon School of Art.
William Brooker's early work was influenced by Walter Sickert and English anecdotal Impressionism featuring dark-toned richly painted nudes, interiors and urban landscapes. Brooker radically changed his style from the mid 1950s and rejected the style of the Camden Town and Euston Road Schools. Brooker's work moved towards a more austere treatment of the still-life subject. Writing in the preface to the artist's important 1968 one man exhibition at Arthur Tooth and Sons, art critic Edwin Mullins commented, '
suddenly formal compositions replaced genre, objects replaced people, an interior became a kind of laboratory, a cell, rather than a place to live in. Then there is the rich fuzz of paint which drags light gently into shadow across the surface of the canvas, picking up as it goes all sorts of echoes (after images) of those still-life objects clustered on the table below. Bottles, pots, jars, boxes, they have half-lost their identity until after a while the shadows between and around them become more positive shapes than they. Brooker's still-lifes acquire the anonymity of objects stared at so hard they shed their meaning, except the meaning they bestow on the space around them.'
Brooker exhibited his work from the early 1950s with the London Group, Messum's, Leicester Gallery, Arthur Tooth & Son and Agnew galleries. In 1968 Arthur Tooth and Sons held a solo exhibition of his work. A retrospective of his work was held at Newcastle Polytechnic in 1987. A joint exhibition with William Scott, R.A., was organised by the British Council. His work is represented in a large number of public collections including the Tate Gallery, Aberdeen Art Gallery, the Arts Council, and galleries in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Brazil.
Elected as an Academician of the Royal Academy on 21 May 1980. |
| Custodial History | Exhibited by art gallery Arthur Tooth & Sons (1842-1970s) in the exhibition, 'William Brooker Paintings 1952-1968', painting no.11, where purchased by the late husband of the owner before sale at Bonhams, Knightsbridge in 2018. Purchased and donated to the Royal Albert Hall by the then President, Mr Jon Moynihan OBE. |