Charles Freegrove Winzer

Charles Henry D. Freegrove Winzer (1886–1940) was a British painter and lithographer. He lived in Paris, and was interned by Germany in World War I. Afterwards, he worked in Sri Lanka, until retirement to Vienna. He is widely regarded as a leading light in the introduction of modern art to Sri Lanka.

Early life

Winzer was born in Warsaw in 1886 to Leonie Mary (née Lesser ) and Julius Charles Winzer, a British diplomat of German descent, and was educated there and in London.

He moved to Paris, where he became a close friend of Matisse.

Career

From 1909 he exhibited at the in Paris. His "distraught sketches" were exhibited alongside the work of the Camden Town Group at the Carfax Gallery in 1912. He had a solo exhibition at the Ashnur Gallery in 1914.

From 1920, he served as Inspector of Art in the Education Department of the Government of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). After retiring from his role in Ceylon, in 1932, he settled in Venice.

During his artistic career, he also worked in Morocco, Spain, India, and Nepal. His 1929 oil painting, Music for Ganesha (or Hymne a Ganesha), is in the National Museum Wales, to whom it was donated by Evan Morgan, 2nd Viscount Tredegar in 1930. Buffaloes and Woman Bathing (1932, lithograph) is in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.

Numerous sources credit him as having played a large part in introducing modern art to Ceylon/Sri Lanka, not least through his influence on the "43 Group". Art Ceylon says he "pioneered the development of the modern art movement in Ceylon".; Shireen Senadhira, writing in Sri Lanka's Sunday Observer, called him "A great contributory factor in the genesis of modern art movement in Sri Lanka... from 1920". Yashodhara Dalmia, in the biography Buddha to Krishna: Life and Times of George Keyt, describes Winzer as "A major contributory factor in the genesis of the modern art movement in Sri Lanka".

Works illustrated

Books illustrated using Winzer's lithographs include: