EUSTON ROAD SCHOOL

1937 - ?

Euston Road School was co-founded in October 1937 by Sir William Menzies Coldstream, Graham Bell (1910-1943), Victor Pasmore (1908-1998) and Claude Rogers and was set up as a School of Drawing and Painting, in reaction to Surrealism and non-figurative abstract art. It was first established in Fitzroy Street, London, but took its name from the 314/316 Euston Road to where it had moved. Its teaching concentrated on observation and working from the model and although short-lived, it attracted several prominent artists as teachers and students during its brief existence. These included Frank Graham Bell (1910-1943), Rodrigo Moynihan (1910-1990), Anthony Devas (1911-1958), Lawrence Burnett Gowing (1918-1991), Thelma Hulbert (1913-1995), Adrian Durham Stokes (1902-1972) and Bernard Arthur Ruston Carter (1909-2006). The School was closed with the outbreak of war in 1939, but its name has since become synonymous with a specific style of painting that continued to influence the development of British painting during the post-war years, and which has since become associated with the teaching of the Camberwell School of Arts & Crafts and the Slade School of Fine Art. Suffolk artists who were associated with the Euston Road School included Elinor Bellingham-Smith, Flavia Ria Joan Blois and Elsie Evelyn Few.