Arnold van Praag

Arnold van Praag (1926–2020) was a British painter whose work combined vigorous handling, strong colour and an intense engagement with everyday life. His subjects ranged from Biblical narratives and portraits to butchers, fishermen, railway stations and domestic scenes, all treated with a painterly directness that has often been compared with German Expressionism.

Born in London, van Praag studied at the Slade School of Fine Art from 1953 to 1957, where he received a scholarship. He belonged to an exceptional generation of students that included Craigie Aitchison, Michael Andrews, Euan Uglow, Victor Willing and Paula Rego.

His first solo exhibition was an exhibition of drawings at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in 1963. Two years later he held a solo exhibition at Roland, Browse & Delbanco which sold out before it opened. Further exhibitions followed there during the 1960s, and in 1967 his work was included in the Whitechapel Art Gallery’s major exhibition The Face of Man.

Despite this early success, van Praag chose to support himself principally through teaching rather than pursue a more overtly commercial career. From 1957 he taught painting at Hertfordshire College of Art and Design, becoming Head of Painting in 1970. In 1975 he was appointed Visiting Tutor in Painting at Camberwell School of Art, a post he held until 1991.

Throughout these years he continued to paint and exhibit. His work remained resolutely figurative, but its emotional force came as much from paint itself as from subject matter. Thick, forceful brushwork, compressed space and a rich palette gave even ordinary scenes a heightened intensity. Biblical themes such as Susannah and the Elders or Crossing the Red Sea could sit naturally beside paintings of tradesmen, commuters and urban life.

After retiring from teaching in 1991, van Praag was able to devote himself fully to painting in his Cambridge studio. This later period produced some of his strongest work, marked by a combination of direct observation, memory and imaginative reinvention. He remained interested in artists of the past, and works such as Storm over Toledo (after El Greco) reveal the continuing importance of European painting to his own practice.

Van Praag had a longstanding connection with The Redfern Gallery. His work appeared regularly in the gallery’s Summer Exhibitions from the early 1990s, and in 2016 Redfern mounted Arnold van Praag at 90, a substantial exhibition of paintings and drawings concentrating particularly on his later work. The exhibition helped bring renewed attention to an artist whose long teaching career and lack of interest in self-promotion had left his achievement less widely recognised than it deserved.

His work is held in public collections including the Arts Council Collection, Ben Uri Gallery & Museum, Manchester Art Gallery and the Courtauld Institute’s Lillian Browse Collection.

Arnold van Praag died in Cambridge in 2020. The Estate of Arnold van Praag is represented by The Redfern Gallery.