Carel Weight

Carel Victor Morlais Weight, (10 September 1908 – 13 August 1997) was an English painter.

Biography

Weight was born in Paddington in London in 1908. His father was a bank cashier and his mother, who was of Swedish and German descent, was a chiropodist. He studied at the Hammersmith School of Art from 1928 to 1930. At Hammersmith he met Ruskin Spear, who became a lifelong friend. At Goldsmiths College, between 1931 and 1933, Weight developed his preference for imaginative compositions.

During the Second World War, Weight served with the Royal Engineers and the Army Education Corps. Weight wrote to the War Artists' Advisory Committee, WAAC, in December 1939 seeking work as a war artist. A number of commissions were discussed and eventually, in March 1942, WAAC purchased one picture from Weight. By then he had been called up and his time for painting was restricted. In July 1942 Weight's painting of a zebra that escaped from London Zoo during an air raid was purchased, but his commanding officer would not release him for further WAAC commissions. It was not until the spring of 1945, after Albert Richards had been killed, that WAAC could offer Weight a full-time post. In Greece and Italy he depicted the immediate aftermath of the war and the role of the British Army in working to restore civil society after the conflict.

In 1947, Weight began teaching at the Royal College of Art, and was professor of painting there from 1957. He retired in 1973. He was elected to the Royal Academy in April 1965, and senior R.A. in 1984.

Weight painted a number of acclaimed portraits, most notably one of Orovida Camille Pissarro, but also of less famous individuals. Many of his paintings showed suburban settings in which unexpected human dramas occurred, some of them humorous and some frightening. Each painting's location was chosen specifically for its abstract structure; the locations were usually actual places, but the figures were imagined and "grw under the brush". He was prolific, and typically painted 50 paintings in a year.

Weight was an instructor, mentor and good friend to John Bratby and Jean Cooke.

Weight died on 13 August 1997 at the age of 88. Works by Weight are owned by the Tate Gallery, Huddersfield Art Gallery, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Imperial War Museum and feature in the United Kingdom Government Art Collection.

David Bowie bought and owned Carel Weight's Laertes (1979) as part of his private collection.

Keith Waterhouse uses the strand of sinister suburbia in Weight's work as a metaphor for the narrator's mistress in Waterhouse's 1988 novel "Our Song".

Awards and honours 1955 Associate member of the Royal Academy. 1984 Senior member of the Royal Academy. 1995 Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour