Biography
Benedict Rubbra (b. Wycombe, Buckinghamsshire, UK 1938), son of the composer Edmund Rubbra and married to the potter Tessa Gavin, was educated at Christ’s Hospital and the Slade School of Fine Art (1956-60). During his early career he taught in England and painted in Aix-en-Provence, France and Florence, Italy. Rubbra also held regular exhibitions of his work in Spain where he had a studio.
Rubbra had his first solo show at the Woodstock Gallery in London 1965 where the Contemporary Art Society purchased his Composition II the following year. In 1970 Rubbra began a career as a portrait painter. His notable commissions included HRH The Prince of Wales, for the Fishmongers’ Hall; Lord Hailsham, Sir Colin Davis and family, Sir Ove Arup and Ursula Vaughan Williams. As well as his portrait work he developed an original approach to landscape painting. Three-dimensional models were constructed, based on ideas drawn from landscape, which provided the starting point for final canvases. An exhibition was held at the Barbican Centre in 1991, and in 1992 some were included, with a selection of his wife’s pots, at John Bly, Bury Street.
Rubbra’s Winter Sunlight Searching for Snowdrops was produced by Curwen Chilford Press as a limited-edition print in 1992. In the 1990s he also wrote two in structional books on portraiture: Drawing Portraits and Painting Children. He lived in Speen, Buckinghamshire and later moved to Chagford, Devon. The County Museum in Aylesbury held a retrospective in 1998. In 2000 he collaborated with Frances Ashcroft, Professor of Physiology at Trinity College, Oxford on an exhibition of art and science at the Zoology Museum, Cambridge.
