'late Autumn, Cobham Wood' Watercolour by Alfred Hackney

A watercolour landscape painting by Alfred Hackney (1926 - 1994), fully entitled ‘Late Autumn Landscape On The Edge of Cobham Wood, Kent’. The painting is signed on the front and has an exhibition label on the rear. It has a lovely ethereal quality to it and captures the feel of autumn. Alfred Hackney was the second of five brothers, and was born near Doncaster in South Yorkshire. The family moved to Stoke on Trent, where his father was from originally, when Alfred was six. When a young teenager he was accepted as a part-time student at Burslem School of Art. His teacher, Reginald C Haggar, a traditional watercolour artist, encouraged him to apply to the Royal College of Art in 1943 where he was accepted. His service during the second world war caused a bit of a delay, but he graduated in 1949 after which he became a lecturer at West Surrey College of Art and Design (later the Farnham School of Art, and then the University of Creative Arts Farnham), where he stayed for the remainder of his career. He became Head of Printmaking and Deputy Head of Fine Arts, and helped establish the Photography Department. He was elected to the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers in 1949 and to the Royal Watercolour Society in 1951 where he exhibited, and also at the Royal Academy and with the London Group. Hackney’s work can be found in the permanent collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, the art galleries of Bradford, Wakefield, Nottingham, Keighley, Sheffield and Preston, the City Art Gallery in the Potteries and the Art Gallery of Wellington in New Zealand. Including the frame: 78cm wide, 58cm tall, 3cm deep. The image size is approximately 52.5cm wide by 33.7cm tall.