Alan Sumner

Alan Robert Melbourne Sumner (10 November 1911 – 20 October 1994) was an Australian artist; a painter, printmaker, teacher, stained glass designer and WW2 Royal Australian Air Force veteran.

Education Alan Sumner studied at Melbourne's National Gallery Art Schoo l in 1933, at Melbourne Technical College, and from 1933 to 1939 at the George Bell School, then 1950–52 at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, Paris and the Courtauld Institute, London.

Career Sumner was apprenticed as a stained-glass designer for the firm of Brooks Robinson, Melbourne then for fifteen years at E.L. Yencken and Co where he was mentored by fellow artist William Frater, becoming head designer. He painted in a post-impressionist style influenced by George Bell, which he applied in his work as a stained glass artist; he was commissioned for around 100 stained glass works, most important of which are the windows for the Services Memorial Chapel, Scots Church, Melbourne, and the memorial window for Charles Joseph La Trobe in Chapelle de l'Ermitage, Neuchatel, Switzerland.

Legacy Very late in life Sumner was recognised in the exhibition Classical Modernism: The George Bell circle at the National Gallery of Victoria in 1992, and the simultaneous exhibition of his screenprints at Eastgate Gallery, Melbourne that demonstrated facility in the medium in which he would use up to 17 screens on the one print.

Teaching Following service in World War Two, Sumner was appointed assistant instructor in painting at the National Gallery Art School, Melbourne, from 1947 to 1950,

Awards

1948: Crouch Prize, Ballarat 1980: Fellow, British Society Master Glass Painters Art Gallery of New South Wales Art Gallery of South Australia National Gallery of Victoria Queensland Art Gallery Ballarat Fine Art Gallery