John Frye Bourne Portrait of a Civil Defence Man

John Frye Bourne (1912–1991)

John Frye Bourne (1912–1991) was born in Hampstead, the son of Rev A.A. Bourne of Harpenden in Hertfordshire. His childhood was blighted by recurring bouts of sickness, but, during his frequent periods of convalescence, he spent his time learning to paint and draw. Aged sixteen in 1929 he was accepted to study at the Royal Academy—the institution’s youngest student since J.M.W. Turner was admitted in 1790. Bourne studied at the Royal Academy until 1934, specialising in portraiture.

During the Second World War he served as a major in a camouflage unit in Italy and in North Africa. Returning home after the war, he reportedly decided to paint as many portraits as possible in a year, in an attempt to regain his skill.

In 1948 Bourne moved to Broom Cottage on West Common in Harpenden, where he established a garden studio, and the same year he exhibited both at the Royal Academy and at a solo exhibition in Harpenden. He became a popular portrait artist amongst fashionable circles, working in a realist manner characteristic of British art between the Wars. Precise, hard-edged and graphic, his subjects, such as 'The Resting Land-Girl' and 'The Lacrosse Girl', were simultaneously a romanticised view of British life and a presentation of modernity.

John Frye Bourne married the watercolour painter Norah Hett. In 1956 they moved to Rose Hill House in Sidbury in Devon, where they designed the extensive gardens.