Studio RT Ltd

Description

We are pleased to offer for sale this attractive and well executed head and shoulders Pastel Portrait by the artist D. William Dring, who has signed the pastel in the lower left hand corner William Dring and dated it 64 for 1964. With the pastel will be the original receipt for 75 guineas written by William Dring in his own hand and on his headed notepaper, giving his address in Winchester. This would equate to £2,000 today. It also stated that the pastel was a pastel study of Miss Williams, who has her light brown hair in a page boy style and is wearing a peacock blue dress. She has blue eyes. Unfortunately, we have no further information about the sitter.

William Dring, was born Dennis William Dring and known colloquially as John, at 33 Kingscourt Road, Streatham, London on 26th January,1904. His father worked in newspapers and his younger brother James, born 1905, also became an artist. He studied under Henry Tonks at the Slade School 1922-25, winning several scholarships and prizes. While at the Slade, he met a fellow artist, Grace Elizabeth Rothwell, who would become his wife in 1931. His daughter Melissa also became an artist. He was very skillful in all media, becoming a sympathetic portrait painter, who often used his family as models.

He taught painting and drawing at Southampton School of Art until 1942, when he became an official war artist, being given short term contract by the War Artists Advisory Committee painting portraits for the Admiralty, general subjects and the RAF towards the end of the war, often using pastel as a medium.

After the war he became as assistant teacher at the Royal Academy Schools, as well as enjoying commercial success as a portrait painter of notables, including a commission to paint the christening of King Charles III, Queen Mary, HRH The Duke of Edinburgh, HM Queen Elizabeth II. the Prince of Wales as a Flight Lieutenant (now King Charles III), Lord Hailsham,and Margaret Thatcher, to name just a few. There are 63 works in the National Collection at artUK.org, which gives locations of the paintings, as well as many in the hands of the Imperial War Museum and the Royal Collection.

He ws elected an ARA in 1944 and a full RA (Royal Academician) in 1955. He was also elected a Member of the Royal Watercolour Society and a Member of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters.

Agnew's held a retrospective for him in 1990 which he was sadly unable to attend due to illness. He died on 29th September, 1990.

The portrait has been newly double mounted in two-tone acid-free mountboard and is newly framed in a 1 3/4 inch gilt frame. It will be supplied with all new brass hangers, new brass picture wire and will be supplied wired and ready to hang.

Image size: 17 1/2 x 12 1/2 inches - 44.45cm x 31.75cm

Frame size: 26 x 21 inches - 66cm x 53.35cm

Medium: Pastels

Condition: Very good. There is no damage whatsoever. The mounts and frame are new.