Anthony Green: (1939-2023)

Anthony Green RA NEAC LG Hon RBA Hon ROI passed away on 14 February 2023 after a short illness. Read our collection of tributes to Anthony from his fellow NEAC members.

Anthony was elected to the NEAC in 2002 and his wonderful large quirky irregularly shaped narrative paintings have been a highlight of our annual exhibitions. The same goes for the RA summer show where Anthony become a Royal Academician in 1977.

In 1957, Anthony  fell in love with a Slade student. They married in 1961. Mary Cozens-Walker became the inspiration for 600 narrative paintings. Sometimes the subjects were sad, dealing with death, dementia and divorce. More often, he painted love, joy and sexual fulfilment. Mary was the star of his story. Their daughters’ lives are lovingly recorded. He dealt with childhood and old age. He imagined his mother as a teenager, and recorded her passage to Heaven. He loved painting flowers, and accepted commissions to paint portraits, cars, jet engines, barns and Burgundy connoisseurs.

METHOD OF WORKING

Anthony made large, irregularly shaped pictures in oil paint on battened, primed boards. In love, in Paris, on a French government scholarship, and soon to return to marry Miss Cozens-Walker, our hero resolved to paint about his virginity and married love, rather than art about art.

He would make his contribution to Modernism by telling his small private story in pictures – la petite histoire par un petit maître – simply a little history by a jobbing artist. Figurative art would still be relevant. The pictures in his mind’s eye had no edges. His compositions need not be traditional rectangles. His first shaped painting was made in 1964, influenced by images seen in Early Italian Gothic arches and French Romanesque tympanums. Perhaps his developing compositions might have irrelevant perimeters? Paintings fashioned by the multiplicity of pictures in his memory. Art would simply serve his needs.