Donald Fraser (1929–2009) (Art Paintings)

Train in the desert

211 jpg / 102 MB

Donald Hamilton Fraser, who has died aged 80, was one of the most distinctive and idiosyncratic of the generation of British painters that emerged in the years following the second world war. He was no less distinctive in his physical presence, being immensely tall.

Fraser was born in London and educated at Maidenhead grammar school, Berkshire, after which he trained as a journalist with Kemsley Newspapers. Only after completing his national service in 1949 did he decide to study the painting that had long been a private interest. By the time he left St Martin's School of Art in 1952, he was already attracting notice, and, in 1953, the gallery Gimpel Fils gave him the first of many one-man shows. That year he was awarded a French government scholarship to study for a year in Paris, and it was there, perhaps braced by that refreshing French acceptance of the natural place of the artist in the world, that he was to come into a full confidence in himself as a painter, and to find his true way.

In 1954, in a ceremony at the British embassy in Paris, he married Judith Wentworth-Sheilds, a fellow student from St Martin's. On their return to London, Fraser, helped no doubt by his earlier experience as a journalist, worked for a while for Arts Review – in those days an indispensable guide to the British art world – but was soon able to devote himself entirely to his own work. Then, in 1958, Carel Weight, the then professor, took him on as a tutor in the painting school of the Royal College of Art. He was to remain in the post for the next 25 years, fondly remembered by his students for an unfailing understanding and unprescriptive guidance.

In 1975 he was elected an associate and, in 1985, a full member of the Royal Academy (a historic distinction latterly discarded), which, as his work suffered to some extent from the vagaries of fashionable critical attention, became increasingly the principal showcase for his work. He nevertheless exhibited where and whenever he could, with a tally to his name of some 70 one-man shows at home and abroad by the time of his death. His work never lost its integrity, nor did it lose its appeal to the more general, and open-minded, public.

Modest in his own regard, he was ever generous and encouraging to his fellow artists, both as friend and teacher, and the contribution he made to the life of the arts went far beyond his own work, significant though that was. Ever profligate of his time, he served on innumerable exhibition panels, was for 14 years a member of the Royal Fine Arts Commission, and was a vice-president of the Royal Overseas League from 1986. Always a supporter, he had served on the council of the Artists' General Benevolent Fund since 1981, and was its chairman for several years in the 1980s.