Patrick Heron (1920-1999), Painter and art critic

Sitter in 11 portraits
Artist of 5 portraits
Heron was born in Leeds, but spent much of his childhood in Cornwall. In the late 1930s he studied part-time at the Slade School of Art in London. In 1956 he bought Eagles Nest, a home in Zennor, Cornwall, where his family had lived for a time in the late 1920s. The house and its surroundings became a centre for artists and writers in St Ives and central to all of Heron's work. In 1945 and 1946 Heron wrote reviews for the New English Weekly, and was art critic for the New Statesman and Nation (1947-54). Among his most influential written works is The Changing Forms of Art, published in 1955, the year in which his work became predominantly abstract.