‘Scarborough, South Bay’. Image: Bradford Museums & Galleries Service.
Arthur Kitching (1912-1981), figurative and abstract painter and writer, was born in Sheffield. At 16, after matriculation from school, he was employed in a steelworks as a clerk. He studied engineering at evening class, but was continually drawn to art and writing. During 1934, he studied art for five evenings a week at Sheffield College of Art where his talent was recognised.
Arthur Kitching, 1952.
In 1935 Arthur was offered a place at the Royal College of Art in London if the necessary fee of £200 could be raised. This was a considerable sum of money then, which Arthur was unable to afford, so he studied art and painted in his own time, taking any available mundane job to support his interest.
Image: Walker Galleries (see website below)
In 1950, married by this time to Joyce, the couple moved to the Chelmsford area, where Arthur found work with Essex County Council as a draughtsman and worked on the drawings of the first Essex County Plan. This started a 26 year career for him in local government.
In 1958 he returned to Yorkshire to work for Leeds Planning Department and was employed as an assistant in the local authority Surveyors Office at Ilkley, where he lived at Glan-y-Don, a large rambling house beside the River Wharfe and where he established his studio.
He became first an administrator, then in 1964 the first curator, of the recently opened Manor House Museum and Art Gallery, Ilkley. He was later was appointed Exhibitions Organiser for the Bradford Art Galleries.
He had his own solo exhibition at the Manor House in 1965; by then he was in his early 50s.
Image: Walker Galleries (see website below)
Between 1965- 1972, Arthur exhibited his work widely, mostly in libraries and further education centres, became a member of the Leeds Fine Arts Club, and Ilkley Art Club, and taught a drawing class at Skipton.
His portraits and abstract work are vibrantly painted and his work was influenced by a range of abstract and impressionist art movements, particularly the Fauves, Cubist and Vorticists, and artists, notably Wyndham Lewis, Leger, William Roberts and Cezanne.
Wrestlers 2. c.1966. Image: University of Leeds Libraries, Art Collection.
He said of his work:
Good painting means to me, most painting that has been done by ‘an artist’ with both eyes on the canvas, and not with one on its saleability, irrespective of style or subject. The best paintings are those that achieve a miraculous balance between subject and style, and the organisation, whether apparent or not, should be right up to the artist’s capabilities, or a little beyond if possible. The old-fashioned ‘aesthetic’ is the unseen heart of a painting.
(quoted in ‘Arthur Kitchen’, by D.Fraser Jenkins, 1991)
Image: Walker Galleries (see website below)
In 1973 Sheffield Polytechnic held a retrospective show and in 1977 Cartwright Hall gave him a retrospective exhibition. In 1987, after his death, an exhibition of his work, ‘North and South’, was held at Leeds City Art Gallery to coincide with publication of the book ‘Pavements and People’.
In 1988, to connect with the book ‘Sea and Sand’, an exhibition of his paintings of Scarborough toured Bradford, Halifax, Scarborough and Whitby.
Image: Walker Galleries
Dean Clough, Halifax, staged a retrospective exhibition of his work in 1990, and he was represented in the ‘Images of the Yorkshire Landscape’ exhibition at Leeds, York, and Bradford, Cartwright Hall; Cartwright Hall now hold examples of his work, as does the University of Leeds Libraries, Art Collection.
In May and June 2015 the Walker Galleries in Harrogate exhibited and sold many of his paintings and sketches. Arthur was also a gifted poet and a collection of his poems and sketches was published in 2016; see bibliography below.
Image: Walker Galleries
Bibliography (art and poetry related):
‘Sea and Sand’ (1988) by Arthur Kitching published by Smith Settle.
‘Pavements and People’ (1988) by Arthur Kitching published by Smith Settle, including a special edition, signed by Joyce Kitchen and with a portfolio of sketches from the book.
‘Arthur Kitching’ (1991) by David Fraser Jenkins, published by Smith Settle.
‘Collected Poems’ (2016) by Arthur Kitching, edited by The Estate of Arthur Kitchen, published by Grove Publications. ISBN 9781326525408.
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