We all know of someone who can ‘draw a bit’, or perhaps has a way with watercolours, but the sort of talent that can earn someone a living as a portrait painter in oils is a pretty rare one. Sadly, just such a talent was lost to us earlier this year when artist George Corbett, originally a Wordsley lad, died in his eighties.
Marian Corbett, wife of George’s cousin Peter, has kindly lent us the accompanying images which give just a taster of the sort of thing George was capable of,, from full scale oil portraits to uncanny caricatures.
George, the son of Corbetts the grocers on Lawnswood Road, showed a great talent for art from early childhood, and had no problem gaining a place at the renowned School of Arts and Crafts in Stourbridge, just before the Second World War.
The principal of the college at that time was Mr E.M. Dinkel, who was a great admirer of his young pupil and, it’s thought, offered him the encouragement which propelled him into a full time career in art.
College Mr Dinkel urged George to apply for the the Royal College of Art in London, which accepted him. By this time, however, the war was underway and the entire college was evacuated to Ambleside in the Lake District. George loved it, producing some fine work in the fresh, clean air, surrounded by the scenery which had influenced the romantic poets of the eighteenth century. In his later years he would return on occasion to show his friends and family his old haunts and relive his youth.
George also studied at the Royal Academy, for which competition was naturally fierce, but he spent five years as a pupil there. In 1950, his painting The Journey earned him a prize of twenty pounds and a an academy medal.
After completing the best art education available in the country, George Corbett returned to the Midlands, taking on teaching roles in Warwickshire, at Stratford and Leamington Spa. By now his talents were finely honed and as his reputation as a portrait artist began to spread, the commissions rolled in. The mayor of Stratford was one of several mayors around the country whose likeness was captured by George in the fifties, and several notable names from sport and the theatre also asked him to commit their own faces to canvas.
Beacuse these were mostly private commissions it’s difficult to say who sat for George over the years, but we do know who one of them was thanks to one of the photographs Marian has loaned to us. It shows George with the Wordsley- born cricketer Don Kenyon, who played for Worcestershire from just after the war until 1967, and was captain for his last eight years. He still holds the club’s all-time record for total runs scored, and represented England in eight test matches.
Cathedral The photo, taken in the sixties, shows George and Don with the freshly-hung portrait in the cricketer’s home. It was evidently a great likeness, with the great player posed on the New Road ground in front of Worcester Cathedral, bat and gloves in hand. And how fiting that one of his fellow townsmen should be the one to capture his image.
During his time at Leamington, another of George’s models was to have a far greater effect on the rest of his life. A lady from the village of Dunchurch, by the name of Blodwyn Thomas, was persuaded by a friend to sit for George’s drawing class, and after a few weeks of modelling for the students, was asked by George to sit for him, being ‘such an excellent and beautiful subject.’ George and Blodwyn became close, and eventually George moved into Blodwyn’s home, the Old Forge in Dunchurch, where he set up a studio. It was an ideal location too, with his services as a portraitist in great demand in that part of the world.
There he shared Blodwyn’s love of classical music, and amused both himself and others with his caricatures of televsion personalities, many of which he turned into his own unique greetings cards each year.
He remained at the Old Forge until Blodwyn’s death, at which point he moved to Scotland to live with her daughter, having become a part of the family in all but name.
He became a popular figure in his newly adopted home, walking the country lanes in his trademark fedora and topcoat.
As age began to slow him down in recent years he moved back to the Black Country, living with his sister in Dudley until his death earlier this summer.
