LANHAM, Neil

1938 - ?

Neil A. Lanham was born at Halstead, Essex in 1938, only son of the two children of Arthur George Lanham (11 January 1904-12 December 1943), manager of an electricity company, and his wife Ruby Jesse Allerton (27 December 1905-7 February 1998), daughter of Charles Allerton of Redhouse Farm, Boxford, who married at Hadleigh, Suffolk in 1935. Neil, whilst at school, had his paintings exhibited at The Children’s Royal Academy which won him prizes. His mother decided that Neil should become an auctioneer and sent him to a company in Cambridge to learn the trade and he started on large machinery sales at Grain & Chalk, now Cheffins in Cambridge. He then spent a year at the College of Estate Management in London and later, he joined Spear & Sons auction centre at Campsea Ashe, Suffolk and when in his early 20s was offered a position at agricultural firm Charles Boardman & Son, Haverhill, joining them in January 1962, but in June 1962, Mr Boardman died, and the following year Lanham purchased the company. Neil expanded the business into Clare and Bury St Edmund's and started a commercial department and a fine art department, but around 1975 he sold the estate agency side to concentrate on antiques. On becoming an auctioneer, he graduated towards art in collecting, cataloguing, and researching paintings which formulated his mind as to how he wished to paint. Lanham retired from the company in 2000 when his art again came to the fore and in using strong evocative colours on a heavily textured under surface, dragging one colour, in broken line, over another he found that he could create the all-important ‘Zing’. His paintings are of scenes around his Suffolk home at Botesdale and of the undulating Suffolk landscape around Hartest from a point where five churches can be seen. He is also the author of 'Stories from Wags Aldred: Suffolk Stallion Leader' (2008) and 'There's a Story That My Mother Told' (2007).

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Works by This Artist