DEXTER, Owen

1880 - 1952

Owen Dexter was born at Wellingborough, Northamptonshire on 18 April 1880, son of Walter Sothern Dexter (1848-1920), a photographic artist, and his wife Emily Allday (1851-1927), daughter of the late John Allday, who married at Aston Parish Church, Birmingham on 16 November 1875. In 1881, Owen was living at 44 Midland Road, Wellingborough with his parents, 32-year-old Walter and 29-year-old Emily, and siblings, 4-year-old Walter Dexter and 2-year-old Sothern. The following year the family opened a photography & fancy shop at 109 High Street, Kings Lynn, Norfolk where their son Irving and daughter Ida were born. Owen was educated at Kings Lynn and followed in his father's profession as a photographer in the town but exhibited some of his paintings at the Kings Lynn Municipal Museum and Art Gallery in 1907 and again in the two following years and one of his watercolours is illustrated in 'Norfolk and Suffolk Coast' by W. A. Dutt (1909). By 1911, leaving his parents, then hotel proprietors at Sea Road, Felixstowe, Suffolk, Owen was a 30-year-old 'illustrator of works and painter of pictures' living on his own account at 18 Greyhound Lane, Streatham, London. A member of the Ipswich Fine Art Club 1913-1915 and exhibited from Geldham House, Felixstowe in 1913 oil paintings 'An Old Warrior', in 1914 'A Suffolk Country Girl' and a 'Suffolk Shepherd', in 1915 'An Eastern Shepherd' and 'Westminster Bridge and Clock Tower' and in 1916 'Westminster Abbey' and 'A Monk'. In 1921 he was living with his widowed mother and sister Ida at 16 Buckleigh Road, Streatham, London with a boarder Agnes Mary Green (19 December 1882-1965), a schoolmistress whom he married at Wandsworth in 1927. In 1939, an artist painter (incapacitated) living at 201a Church Road, Croydon, Surrey with his wife Agnes. Owen Dexter died at 201a Church Road, Croydon in 1952, aged 71.

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Works by This Artist