I was very sad to hear that the eminent master printmaker
Norman Ackroyd passed away last week
- in the afternoon of a fine warm day (Monday 16th September) at his
home in Bermondsey. He was 86
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| Norman Ackroyd (1938-2024) |
Such a contrast to his lithographs and prints of the windswept, rainy isles
and vaporous clouds in the North of Scotland and other rugged Atlantic
seascapes and landscapes in the UK and Ireland. He was a complete master of
portraying the coasts on the Atlantic seaboard.
His capacity for creating vaporous clouds filled with sea birds - with
amorphous giant shapes representing the coastline which has stood up the
beating of winds and rain from west was simply amazing - and
his prints had very many fans.
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Norman Ackroyd's map of all the locations (with a pin) where he been to create etchings of that landscape in his studio in Bermondsey |
There's a couple of excellent Videos of him talking about his
artwork and his processes on YouTube based on the BBC series
"What do Artists do all day?"
which reviewed him and his work. These are they....
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Norman Ackroyd CBE RA talking about hanging Gallery III at Burlington House (RA Summer Exhibition 2013) which included works hung in honour of the late Mary Fedden RA who had recently passed away. |
This is a video of Norman Ackroyd talking about the process of selecting and then hanging a Summer Exhibition.
Life and career of Norman Ackroyd
His website summarises his life, art education and the career of Norman Ackroyd. He graduated from the Royal College of Art 60 years ago this summer.
- 1938: Born Leeds
- 1956-61: Leeds College of Art
- 1961-64: Royal College of Art, London
- 1988: Elected Royal Academician
- 1994: Appointed Professor of Etching, University of the Arts
- 1999 - 2000: Professor of Printmaking
- 2000: Elected Senior Fellow, Royal College of Art
- 2007: Awarded a C.B.E. for Services to Engraving and printing
- 2013: Elected Senior RA: 1 October 2013
He has produced work for many significant commissions and has work in
prestigious collections all over the world. It also sells pretty fast at the
RA Summer Exhibition
He called his medium “painting with acid”, and he was on friendly terms
with a vast array of the chemicals, from the violent hydrochloric to the
lively nitric, which “bites in all directions”.
Daily Telegraph obituary
His work in Art Collections
His work is in the collections of very many prominent art galleries and
organisations.
Selected Public Collections
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Arts Council of Great Britain
- British Council
- British Museum, London
- Cleveland Museum of Art
- Fogg Art Museum, Harvard
- Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, Geneva
- Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
- Museum of Modern Art, New York
- National Gallery of Art, Washington DC
- National Gallery of Canada
- National Gallery of Norway
- National Gallery of Scotland
- National Gallery of South Africa
- Queensland Art Gallery
- Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
- The Royal Collection, Windsor Castle
- Stedelijk, Amsterdam
- Tate Gallery, London Norman Ackroyd born 1938 - Tate". Tate Britain.
- Utah Museum of Fine Art
and numerous museums and art galleries in the United Kingdom
Ackroyd also received several public mural commissions, produced in
etched stainless steel or bronze. Recent commissions included Lloyds
Bank, London; British Airways, Birmingham Airport; Freshfields,
London; Tetrapack, Stockley Park, Heathrow; a bronze mural for the
Main Hall of the British Embassy, Moscow; and Lazards Bank, Stratton
Street, London W1. RA Obituary
Obituaries
Other posts about his life include:
Known for his dramatic, evocative landscape works which often
featured open water or sweeping vistas, Ackroyd was a senior
fellow at the Royal College of Art, and had been a Royal
Academician since 1991.
He had been ill for some time and was becoming increasingly weak
and frail these past few months. He died at home on Monday, in
his bed surrounded by his family. It was very beautiful: a sunny
afternoon, and all was quiet and peaceful except for the
birdsong heard through the open window in his room.
The public were enchanted, and his fellow etchers baffled, by
the softness he could conjure from the brutal process of
bathing metal in acid
Ackroyd, who was best known for his evocative landscapes and
seascapes, travelled around the British Isles making sketches,
later reworking them as etchings. His works are held in
collections from the Tate to the Museum of Modern Art, New York,
and his work was displayed in the Royal Academy’s summer
exhibitions. He also created engraved metal murals for Lloyds
Bank, British Airways and the British embassy in Moscow.
