John Stobart

John Stobart Biography:
Born in Leicester, England, John Stobart was the second son of a pharmacist and a mother who died giving birth to him. Raised by his maternal grandmother and various housekeepers, he showed an early aptitude for creativity but a lack of interest in academic learning. His low grades but apparent flair for drawing persuaded his father to enroll him in Derby College of Art in September, 1946. John Stobart Suddenly fascinated by a new and more relaxed environment, Stobart took to the change like a duck to water, achieving high honors and a county scholarship to London's prestigious Royal Academy Schools, being one of only four students accepted that year. John Constable, J.W.M. Turner and many other British painters had studied in those same hallowed halls. Although interrupted by the obligatory national service (in Stobart's case the R.A.E), he enjoyed the wealth of inspiration offered by nearby museums and galleries. Stobart used his five years at the Academy - as Henry Rushbury, then Keeper at the R.A. wrote in a testimonial, to "work with tireless enthusiasm to develop his powers." Realizing fairly early in his student days that an essential part of becoming a professional artist would be to achieve sales of his work, he began to exhibit small landscapes painted in the countryside outside London and along the river Thames. He found comfort in the fact that each sold fairly readily. Upon graduation from the R.A. Schools, Stobart embarked on a voyage to South Africa to visit his father who, in 1950, had purchased a pharmacy in Bulawayo, - Southern Rhodesia (later Zimbabwe) - starting out on a new adventure at age 59. It was during this voyage, that the young artist came up with a novel idea. Gathering material, making sketches in each of the twelve exotic ports the passenger-cargo vessel put into, John Stobart realized new horizons. If he could borrow plans for new vessels being built, he could best take advantage of all that he had carefully observed in these exotic ports. Using his volume of sketches as background settings, and knowing these vessels could not be photographed, Stobart surmised that there would be a strong chance that paintings of the new ships would be attractive to the owners. The original paintings would be suitable for board room displays, and the prints could be used on calendars that each shipping company sent out annually. The idea worked well. Within two years his paintings of ships in foreign ports were decorating some fifteen shipping company board rooms in London.  >>click here for more