Roger Hampson
Artist Biography
Roger Hampson was born in 1925 and grew up in the working class village of Tyldesley near Wigan. He is best known for his paintings, drawings, lino prints and mono prints of the industrial surroundings in which he was brought up and specialized in mining scenes, mill scenes, street scenes and pictures of the people that he encountered in these surroundings.
Roger Hampson studied at Manchester College of Art from 1946 - 1952 and followed a career in teaching art, becoming the principal at Bolton College of Art & Design from 1978 to 1986. He was also a graphic designer with a succession of Manchester firms and was elected president of the Manchester Academy of Fine Arts from 1969 to 1976.
Hampson's inspiration stemmed from his childhood and upbringing. Early experiences of clogs on cobbled streets, mines, factories and grey northern skies shaped the artist's values in life, beliefs which forged a signature for his art. He was motivated to paint a landscape and way of life that he knew was fast disappearing. He painted what he knew - real people in real places doing everyday things. His paintings are social documents and capture the bleakness of the northern landscape as well as the warmth and humour of its people. Busy factory scenes, quiet landscapes, men on their way for a day's work at the mine, old people with wrinkly faces, women in head scarves are all painted in muted colours to emphasize the drabness of the period.
Roger died in 1996 aged 71. In 2009 a book on his life and work entitled ROGER HAMPSON - a lost landscape was published to coincide with a retrospective exhibition at Gallery Oldham.
L.S. Lowry was a great admirer of his work and his paintings have been exhibited in many group shows and in 30 solo exhibitions. Roger was an important post war Northern Art artist and his significant work is undervalued which I'm sure will be rectified in the near future.
Roger Hampson studied at Manchester College of Art from 1946 - 1952 and followed a career in teaching art, becoming the principal at Bolton College of Art & Design from 1978 to 1986. He was also a graphic designer with a succession of Manchester firms and was elected president of the Manchester Academy of Fine Arts from 1969 to 1976.
Hampson's inspiration stemmed from his childhood and upbringing. Early experiences of clogs on cobbled streets, mines, factories and grey northern skies shaped the artist's values in life, beliefs which forged a signature for his art. He was motivated to paint a landscape and way of life that he knew was fast disappearing. He painted what he knew - real people in real places doing everyday things. His paintings are social documents and capture the bleakness of the northern landscape as well as the warmth and humour of its people. Busy factory scenes, quiet landscapes, men on their way for a day's work at the mine, old people with wrinkly faces, women in head scarves are all painted in muted colours to emphasize the drabness of the period.
Roger died in 1996 aged 71. In 2009 a book on his life and work entitled ROGER HAMPSON - a lost landscape was published to coincide with a retrospective exhibition at Gallery Oldham.
L.S. Lowry was a great admirer of his work and his paintings have been exhibited in many group shows and in 30 solo exhibitions. Roger was an important post war Northern Art artist and his significant work is undervalued which I'm sure will be rectified in the near future.
