Robert Whitmore 1908-1993
Talented artist, inspiring teacher

Mr. Whitmore was my high school art teacher. Robert Whitmore was born in Norfolk in 1908 and died in Shoreham-by-Sea in 1993. He taught art for 40 years at Kilburn Grammar School, a career interrupted only by a few years fighting the enemy with a double bass, a screwdriver and a paintbrush in the RAF. Many of the paintings he did at the time were of air bases, planes and wartime scenes. At that time he exhibited with the Royal Canadian Academy.

He moved to London from Kings Lynn at age seventeen on a painting scholarship to the Regent Street Polytechnic, then a highly regarded art college. He also studied printmaking at the Central and drawing at the Slade. After graduating, not prepared to accept more parental help, he took a teaching position rather than continue with post-graduate studies.

Just before being called up to serve in the Second World War, he had met another young teacher, who, like himself, had been evacuated to Northampton with her Willesden pupils. He painted her portrait; an act of love that ended in marriage. He returned to England to Marjorie and their first daughter Jane; their second daughter Sue was born shortly after. He and Marjorie were married for over fifty years.

His teaching career, which had begun in 1925, was a good one: he was, by everyone's standards, an excellent teacher. His most famous ex-student, Royal Academician Ken Howard, attributes his own enthusiasm and the direction his work took to this early influence. (Incidentally, Kilburn Grammar School has now become the Islamia School.) As President of the Old Boys Association he attended the annual dinners well into the 1980s, invited, he always maintained, so that the rest of them should feel younger. His daughter has written that he regarded himself primarily as an artist, but like many a committed teacher, the profession sapped much of the energy required for his own work. His students hope that was not the case.

As an artist he had early success; at age 23, one of his paintings was accepted by the Royal Academy. Throughout the 30s, 40s and 50s he exhibited frequently in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition and the Hampstead Arts Council open air shows. Due to his dedication as a teacher, he did not promote his painting enough; he was, nevertheless, a prolific and talented artist-and an inspiring teacher!

When he left teaching in the late 60s he opened a small gallery in Lewes, Sussex His first, last and only solo exhibition was at the Tricycle Gallery in Kilburn in 1984. Not long after that, his health began to deteriorate; he died in Shoreham-by-Sea in 1993.

Geo.Eynon 2007
Compiled from notes by his daughter, Sue Whitmore, herself a well known London artist