Artist      William Townsend
Title       Hop Alley
Date      1950's
object    Painting
Media    oil
Size       51 x 35.5cm
Ref         79

Purchased in the 101st RWA Annual Exhibition in 1953

Other websites featuring this artist's work
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Hop Alley
Born in 1909 in London, William Townsend was a landscape painter who was pre-eminent in the British art world of the mid-twentieth century. He studied at the Slade School of Art between 1926-30.

Townsend held his first solo exhibition at the Bloomsbury Gallery, London in the spring of 1932, exhibiting with the recently formed London Group from 1931 onward. As with several other members of the London group, he also palyed a part in the Euston Road School before the war.

Townsend served with the Royal Artillery and the Army Educational Corps during World War Two and later appointed to manage the Arts section of the Army School of Education in Lancashire at the end of hostilities. He taught both at Camberwell School of Art and at the Slade School from 1949 onward, David Bomberg being among his students. He moved with his family to Canada to teach at the University of Alberta in 1951.

William Townsend died in Banff, Canada in 1973. .

Further Reading:
Mary Chamot, Dennis Farr and Martin Butlin, The Modern British Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, London 1964

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