Clifford Eric Hall 1904-1973

Painter in oil and watercolour, draughtsman and etcher, born in London. In the early 1920s he began to study at Richmond Art School, then Putney Art School, 1922-1925, and the Royal Academy Schools, 1926-7. He was influenced especially by Walter Sickert, and much of Hall's work bears the stamp of Sickert's palette and subject-matter: landscapes, genre scenes and London low life. In the late 1920s he lived in Paris, studying with Andre Lhote. Had a one-man show at the Beaux Arts Gallery in the mid-1930s, than served with a stretcher party during much of World War II. In 1946 he had the first of a number of one-man exhibitions at Roland, Browse and Delbanco, and his monograph on Constantin Guys was published. Making a living in Bohemian Chelsea was often a struggle for Hall, who recorded his experiences in an unpublished journal covering fifty years from the 1920s. In the late 1960s he began a new series of pictures: women wrapped in towels, usually seen from behind or side on, their faces obscured. His work is in many public collections in Britain, and abroad, including the Imperial War Museum, Victoria & Albert Museum, and Arts Council. The Belgrave Gallery held a memorial exhibition in 1977; a studio sale took place at Christie's, London, in 1982. Hall latterly married one of his students from the Regent Street Polytechnic School of Art, Ann Hewson, and they lived in London.