RONALDSON, Ronald

1919 - 2015

Ronald Ronaldson was born at 381 Elswick Road, Newcastle-upon-Tyne on 23 September 1919, adopted son of George Ronaldson (1871-30 November 1922), a platelayer, and his wife Annie Beatrice née Lackenby (11 December 1873-2 June 1948), who married at Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1899. In 1921 Rondald was a 3-year-old living at 381 Elswick Road, Newcastle, Newcastle-upon-Tyne with 49-year-old George and 47-year-old Annie, with their children Margaret Beatrice 20 and Robert Henry 9. George died in 1922 when Ronald was raised by his widowed mother Annie who, in 1939, was a widow living at 27 Kelso Gardens, Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Ronald won a scholarship to a Junior Technical School where he was taught technical drawing and later practiced in watercolour and, after a spell at a builders’ merchants, joined the Royal Navy. During the Second World War he took up the paintbrush and purchased his first oil paints on a port of call in Cape Town, South Africa since when a self-taught artist. He married at Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1950, Marjorie Martha Hickey (20 May 1918-16 July 2006) and they moved to Bury St Edmund’s, Suffolk, where Ronald worked at the West Suffolk hospital, retiring after 34 years as chief medical laboratory scientific officer. His methods in painting although rapid, the paintings are not completed without consideration or reworking in his landscapes and still life. Ronaldson has been included in publications and exhibitions from Northumbria to East Anglia particularly along the East Coast. First with the Northern Artists and later in East Anglia and exhibited at Phoenix Art Gallery, Lavenham; Suffolk Art Society; Bury St Edmund's Art Gallery; Gainsborough's House Museum and Gallery, Sudbury with solo shows at Chappel Galleries, Essex 1993-2008. Ronald exhibited at Bury St Edmund's Church Walks in 2012 when sixty highly regarded professional artists as well as local artists and students generously donated their work and supported by the School of Art, West Suffolk College with all the proceeds going to St Nicholas Hospice Care. His wife died on 16 July 2006 and Ronald Ronaldson died in the West Suffolk Hospital on 18 January 2015, aged 95, being survived by their son Clive.

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Works by This Artist