Biography
Denis Wirth-Miller (b. Folkestone, Kent 1915 - d. 2010) left school at the age of 15 and got a job in the design department of the Manchester textile manufacturer Tootal, Broadhurst and Lee, transferring to London on 1931 and lived in Walter Sickert's studio. In 1937 he met his lifelong friend Richard Chopping and at the outbreak of WW2 the couple moved to the Stour Valley in Essex where they met Christine and John Nash, whose brother's work was initially an influence. They collaborated on a children’s book, Heads, Bodies and Legs (1946) which became a success. They also enrolled at Cedric Morris’s East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing, where they met Lucian Freud. They later settled in nearby Wivenhoe where they entertained their Fitzrovian friends including Robert MacBryde, Robert Colquhoun and Francis Bacon, whose work, particulary of moving figures, is said to have been inspired by Wirth-Miller and allegedly they touched up each others works. However, after Bacon mocked an exhibition of his in 1977, Wirth-Miller destroyed much of his work and gave up his artistic career. He is primarily known for his painted landscapes of East Anglia and Dartmoor in Devon.
