John Arthur Malcolm Aldridge

John Aldridge RA (26 July 1905 – 3 May 1983)[1] was an accomplished oil painter, skilled draftsman, wallpaper designer, and esteemed art teacher in the United Kingdom. He was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy (ARA) in 1954 and a Royal Academician (RA) in 1963.

ALDRIDGE, JOHN ARTHUR MALCOLM

(1905 -1983), painter and gardener, was born near Woolwich 26 July 1905, the second of the three sons (there were no daughters) of Major John Barttelot Aldridge, DSO, of the Royal Field Artillery, and his wife, Margaret Jessica Goddard, the daughter of a Leicester architect.

His father died when he was three, and his mother subsequently married again and had a daughter. He won scholarships both to Uppingham and Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he obtained a second in classical honour moderations (1926) and a third in liter ae hu- maniores (1928). At Oxford his diverse activities included both rugby and the Opera Club, but his interest in painting was already strong; with the intention of teaching himself to paint, he moved to Hammersmith in 1928. His work came to the attention of Ben Nicholson [q.v.], who in 1930 invited him to exhibit in London with the Seven and Five Society. In 1933 he held his first one-man show, and a year later some of his paintings were chosen for the Venice Biennale.

During the 1930s Aldridge was closely associated with a group which included Robert Graves [q.v.], (John) Norman Cameron, Laura Riding, Len Lye, and Lucie Brown, whom he was later to marry. Both Deya, Majorca, which Graves made his home, and the Place House, Great Bardfield, Essex, bought by Aldridge in 1933, were centres for vigorous literary and artistic activity; these included productions of the Seizin Press. Aldridge notably illustrated Laura Riding's The Life of the Dead (1934), and also designed the dust-jackets for most of Graves's novels. Towards the end of the decade he began to design wallpapers, as did Edward Bawden, then also living in Great Bardfield. In 1939 Aldridge's name was included among those artists whom the third Viscount Esher proposed should be exempted from military service.

Between 1941 and 1945 he served in the Royal Army Service Corps and, after being commissioned, in the Intelligence Corps. During his time in North Africa and Italy, he made many drawings and water-colours, some of which are a valuable record of army and civilian life in wartime. He did distinguished work as an interpreter of air photographs.

After demobilization, he returned to Great Bardheld and resumed both his painting in oils and the care of his garden.

In 1949 (Sir) William Coldstream, recently appointed head of the Slade School of Fine Art, invited him to become a part-time member of staff at the School. For the next twenty-one years, until his retirement in 1970, and although without any formal art school training himself, Aldridge proved a successful and much-liked teacher. In 1948 he first exhibited at the Royal Academy; he was elected ARA in 1954, and RA in 1963. He played an active part in the Academy's affairs, serving several times on the hanging committee.

Locally, he was one of the principal organisers of an interesting experiment in the 1950s, when a number of painters and designers living in or near Great Bardfield exhibited their work in their own houses.

As a painter, Aldridge was primarily interested in landscape and vernacular buildings, particularly in Essex, abroad in Italy and France, and in Majorca, on visits to Robert Graves. He also produced some noteworthy still-life paintings, and a few portraits, including one of Robert Graves, which was later acquired by the National Portrait Gallery. His early work made a considerable impression; it had a freshness and directness, and the description 'stark and wiry' suits it well. This economical formality began to change during the 1930s and, after the war, he became more concerned with detailed, accurate representation, perhaps in part because he had little liking for the then fashionable abstract and decorative painting. His interest in gardening and painting ran closely together; as he wrote in 1959, he saw the development of a garden as 'a process which combines selection, precision and an understanding of the nature and possibilities of the materials in a way which is analogous to painting' I lis friendship with the classical architect Raymond Erith [q.v.] was an important influence on him; a common passion for gardening drew him to near neighbours such as Sir Cedric Morris and John Nash |q.v.|.

Aldridge was a gentle, friendly man, of great charm, with a scholarly interest in painting, architecture, and gardening. In appearance he was tall and spare He was a generous host in his beautiful Tudor house, initselfa work of art which owed much to the taste of his first Lucie. It was there that he died 3 May 1983. He was married twice; in 1940 to (Cecilia) Lucie (Leeds) Brown, daughter of Isaac Ebenezer Leeds Saunders, farmer, of Clayhithe, near Cambridge, and in 1970, after the dissolution of his first marriage the same year, to Maragret ('Gretl') Anna Maria Cameron, widow of the poet (John) Norman Cameron, daughter of Dr. Friederich Viktor Bajardi, Hofrat at Graz. She died early in 1983. There were no children of wither marriage.

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