Biography
Albert Turpin (b. Bethnal Green, London 1900 - d. 1964) was a window cleaner by profession (although he refused to clean pub windows as his mother had died of cirrhosis of the liver) and also a member of the East London Group of artists which also included the Steggles brothers - Harold and Walter - Elwin Hawthorne, Archibald Hattemore, Grace Oscroft and B. R. Swinnerton, amongst others. Turpin took art evening classes at Bethnal Green Working Men’s Institute and at the Bow & Bromley Commercial Institute, showing paintings in exhibitions held by the Institute at the Bethnal Green Museum. He was taught by John Cooper (1894-1943), whose classes at Bow led to the important East London Art Club show at the Whitechapel Art Gallery between 8 December – 22 December 1928, in which Turpin exhibited ten canvasses. He also regularly showed his pictures at Alex. Reid & Lefevre from the first of its eight annual exhibitions of work by the East London Group, in November 1929.
In the mid-1930s Turpin joined the Labour Party, becoming affiliated to the North-East Bethnal Green Branch and eventually also to the Co-operative Party. He served part-time with the London Fire Brigade from early 1938, then full-time in September 1939 when he acted as secretary of a branch of the Fire Brigades Union. He joined the National Fire Service in August 1941, remaining with it until October 1946. From 1940, he was an official Fire Brigade War Artist with his work exhibited both in Britain and North America. While an instructor at a London Fields Fire Service training school, after telling students the right way of doing a thing, he would sometimes “make a lightning sketch to show what might happen if they ignored my advice.” He was elected Mayor of Bethnal Green in 1946-47 but continued to make drawings and paintings of Bethnal Green, Stepney, Hackney, Hoxton and Islington. Although the East London Group was no longer active post-war, Turpin still showed his pictures – at Morpeth School in Bethnal Green, Whitechapel Art Gallery, Guildhall Art Gallery and Qantas Gallery in Piccadilly until his death.
