Michael Rothenstein RA

Michael Rothenstein RA (1908–1993) was a British painter and printmaker whose career moved from lyrical landscape painting towards increasingly experimental forms of printmaking. By the 1950s and 1960s he had become one of the most inventive British graphic artists of his generation, continually testing the possibilities of relief printing, screenprinting, etching and unconventional materials.

Born in Hampstead, London, Rothenstein was the younger son of the artist Sir William Rothenstein. He studied at Chelsea Polytechnic and subsequently at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, where his teachers included Archibald Standish Hartrick and Bernard Meninsky.

His early work was principally concerned with landscape and watercolour. In 1940 he was commissioned by the Pilgrim Trust’s Recording Britain project to paint areas of Sussex threatened by wartime change. Soon afterwards he settled at Great Bardfield in Essex, becoming part of the remarkable community of artists associated with the village, among them Edward Bawden, John Aldridge and Kenneth Rowntree.

The Redfern Gallery played an important role in Rothenstein’s early career. In 1942 the gallery presented an exhibition of his recent paintings alongside work by Eileen Agar, with a catalogue foreword by Paul Nash. The exhibition marked an important moment in Rothenstein’s emergence during the war years and began a connection with Redfern that the gallery would revisit many decades later.

After the war Rothenstein increasingly turned away from painting towards printmaking. In 1946 he produced his first editioned print and over the following decade developed an intense interest in the physical processes of making prints. In 1954 he established his own graphic workshop at Great Bardfield, where he experimented freely with linocut, woodcut, screenprinting and etching.

Rothenstein believed that almost any surface could become a printing matrix. Driftwood, sheets of metal, found objects, photographs and other materials were incorporated into his work, allowing him to break down conventional distinctions between printmaking, collage and painting. Birds, farm machinery, boats, weather vanes and other familiar objects recur throughout his prints, gradually becoming more symbolic and abstract.

His experimentation intensified after working with Stanley William Hayter at Atelier 17 in Paris in 1957. During the 1960s his imagery became increasingly abstract, with repeated motifs, vivid colour and unconventional textures replacing the quieter naturalism of his earlier landscapes. He also wrote extensively about printmaking, publishing Linocuts and Woodcuts in 1962, Frontiers of Printmaking in 1966 and Relief Printing in 1970.

Rothenstein taught printmaking at Camberwell School of Art and elsewhere, and in 1962 became an Art Fellow at the University of Sheffield. He was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1977 and later became a Royal Academician.

The Redfern Gallery renewed its association with Rothenstein after his death, notably with Michael Rothenstein R.A., 1908–93: An Exhibition of Watercolours from the 1940s in 1997. His work has continued to appear in the gallery’s exhibitions of Modern British art, including the Redfern Centenary Exhibition in 2023 and Then & Now in 2026.

Rothenstein’s work is held in major public collections including Tate, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Government Art Collection, the Arts Council Collection and the Fry Art Gallery.