Biography

Wyndham Lloyd was born in New Zealand in 1909 but was brought up and schooled in England. Wyndham started painting from an early age and always wanted to be either an artist or an architect. His parents who thought otherwise sent him to be a tea planter in Ceylon when he was 19 years old. There he continued to paint and before long had a one man show at Kandy, the second largest city of the island. During the Second World War he joined the Ceylon Planters Rifle Corps and after some action in North Africa and a period of convalescence, was back in Ceylon exhibiting with a prestigious group of Singhalese artists, the43 Group (1). After the war Lloyd turned from tea-planting to tea broking until 1960 when he discovered he had skin cancer and decided to return to England where he managed an apple farm in Great Horkesley, Essex which he inherited from his brother. There he built for himself and his wife Ethel a bungalow and a small shed where he kept his paintings, mostly landscapes. These landscapes represented places such as Nayland in Suffolk and Boxted and Horkesley, but also Boxford and Newmarket (Suffolk) as well as Royston (Hertfordshire) and Brandcaster (Norfolk). These scenes were usually painted in his caravan studio after photographs and drawings taken while travelling. Apart from landscapes Wyndham Lloyd also painted abstract pictures of which he was very fond and still lifes, including rosy apples. Apple trees played an important part of his life. Originally he had 200 acres of them which he farmed with his son-in-law, Paul Pissarro, the great-great-grandson of Camille Pissarro, a skilled draughtsman according to Lloyd.

Wyndham Lloyd, nicknamed “Taffy” according to Charles Debenham (q.v.), was chairman of Colchester Art Society from 1965 to 1971. He was a member of the Society from the early days and became an Honorary Member in 1972.

Statement

Apart from attending a night art school in Colchester for six months, Wyndham Lloyd never had any formal training, instead, according to him, acquiring his skill mainly by mixing with other artists. His first three exhibitions were in Sri Lanka when he was part of the 43 Group, in 1946, 48 and 56 when he showed with artists committed to promoting modernism and expressionism. It is that period that was probably most important in his stylistic development. Typically of this art form of the 20th century his work as seen here is highly intense in colour applied with a free brushstroke.

Selected Exhibitions

Group Shows

1942 New English Art Club, Mall Galleries, London

1950, 52, 53, 55, 56, 59 Royal Institute of Oil Painters, London

1952, 53, 58, 59 National Society of Artists

1952, 59 Royal Society of British Artists, UK (source: The Times, 1956)

1953, 55, 58, 59 United Artists, UK (source: The Times, 1956)

1959 Hesketh Hubbard Art Society, London

c. 1958 Paris Salon, France

1966 The Minories, Colchester (with Anthony Atkinson and Arthur Lett-Haynes

1994 Hayletts Gallery, Maldon(with Laurence Edwards, sculptor)

Also group shows with Colchester Art Society; Suffolk Art Society, Ipswich; at the Quay Theatre, Sudbury.

Solo Exhibitions

1946 Queen’s Hotel, Kandy, Sri Lanka

1948 Galle Face Hotel, Colombo, Sri Lanka

1956 Colombo Art Gallery, Colombo, Sri Lanka

c. 1970 Gallery 60, Colchester

1976 1989 Mercury Theatre Gallery, Colchester

1980 Prettygate Branch Library, Colchester

1982 St Mary’s Art Centre, Colchester

1992 Chappel Galleries, Chappel; also in 2001, memorial exhibition

Bibliography

BUCKMAN, David, Dictionary of artists in Britain since 1945, Art Dictionaries Ltd, Bristol, 1998, p. 760

BUTLER, Nicholas, Essex County Standard, 3rd August 1990

(1) The 43 Group was a movement formed in Colombo, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) in 1943 by a group of young pro-independence painters with no common stylistic technique except a commitment to free expression. Many members were well travelled and mainly educated in Europe. Their patron was the photographer Lionel Wendt. Many left the group and emigrated in the mid-1960s when the political climate worsened.