Notes

Maurice Cockrill was a British painter and poet. He was born in Hartlepool, County Durham, but his father’s work took the family to south Wales, then the Midlands, and finally to Brymbo in north Wales in 1942. In 1960, Cockrill enrolled at the Wrexham School of Art before pursuing fine art at Reading University from 1961 to 1964. He then moved to Liverpool, where he taught at art colleges and began to establish himself as a painter. After 18 years in Liverpool, Cockrill moved to London in the summer of 1982. He held his first solo exhibition at the Edward Totah Gallery in London in 1984 and then began exhibiting internationally. In 1995, he was honoured with a retrospective of his work from 1974 to 1994 at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool. In 1998, a survey of his work from 1989 was exhibited at the Royal West of England Academy in Bristol. Cockrill was elected to the Royal Academy in 1999 and was elected keeper of the Royal Academy Schools in 2004. Cockrill’s style was constantly evolving. While his Liverpool works employed Pop and Photo-Realism, his later works favoured Romantic Expressionism.

Cockrill’s artwork can be found in such esteemed collections as the British Museum, London; Royal Academy of Arts, London; Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool; and Arts Council of Wales.

Provenance

Everard Read, Johannesburg.

Private Collection.

Strauss & Co, Johannesburg, 20 May 2019, Lot 177.