John E. Croney
b. 1921

John Croney was born in November 1921 , he won a scholarship to the Royal College of Art but in fact turned it down and went to Camberwell College of Art in 1938;  He joined the Royal Air Force in 1940 spending most of his war years in Burma and the Bay of Bengal.  He did a series of sketches during his wartime travels.  In 1946 he returned to Camberwell College of Art where he met his wife Isobel Ritchie and they were married in 1949.

He studied under one of the most influential abstract painters of all, Victor Pasmore, and war and landscape artist Roland Vivian Pitchforth, both of these artists influenced his work.  Fellow students were Terry Frost and Humphrey Lyttleton. 

He was offered a teaching post at Camberwell but decided to gain a teaching qualification at Goldsmith’s College, and took up his first post as Painting Master at Burnley School of Art, he was there for a decade.  He moved back to London in 1959 to teach at John Princes Street, later to become the London School of Fashion where until 1983 he was a full time senior lecturer in anthropometry and human figure studies, during this time he also became Head of Life Drawing. His book “Anthropometry for Designers” became a standard work.  During this period he also taught classes at St. Martin’s College of Art,

He wrote four books for the Publishers, Batsford, “Anthropometrics for Designers”, “Guides to Painting and Drawing” – “Life Drawing” and “Sea and River”.

He moved to Norfolk around 1980, and continued painting, the water and boats being a favourite subject, also Norfolk Landscapes.  In his later years he moved to Abstraction. 

The body of work in this exhibition spans over sixty years and is very diverse with life studies, fashion drawings, landscapes, seascapes, boats and abstract paintings.

His drawings and paintings have been exhibited in one man and mixed shows in London and all over the UK and many are in private collections. 

Isobel Ritchie 1928 – 1998
(John Croney’s Wife)

Included in this exhibition are a small collection of wood engravings and etchings from the 1940’s by Isobel Ritchie