Arthur Ambrose McEvoy ARA ARWS

1877 - 1927

McEvoy was born in Crudwell, Wiltshire, in 1877, the son of a Scottish engineer. His younger brother Charles was to become a playwright. Encouraged by Whistler, who spotted his talent early on, McEvoy enrolled at the Slade School when he was fifteen, becoming a member of the group around Augustus John and William Orpen. McEvoy had a reputation for fine technical skill in oils, learnt from study with Whistler, and he later worked with Walter Sickert in Dieppe. While at the Slade, he had an unhappy affair with Gwen John. From 1900, he exhibited at the New English Art Club, becoming a member in 1902. In the same year, he married the painter Mary Edwards (1870–1941). In 1907, he had a solo exhibition at the Carfax Gallery. During the 1900s, McEvoy established a reputation as a portrait painter of fashionable society beauties, often painted in watercolour in a rapid, sketchy style. In World War I, he was attached to the Royal Naval Division from 1916-18 and painted several distinguished sailors and soldiers, now in the Imperial War Museum and Royal Museums Greenwich. McEvoy received many commissions from wealthy patrons, including in the United States, where he also exhibited at the Duveen Galleries. In 1924, he was elected to the Royal Academy, and two years later to the Royal Watercolour Society.