Biography
William John Bertram Newcombe (b. Victoria, British Columbia, Canada 1907 - d. 1969), a largely self-taught artist, took lessons with Frederick Varley (1881-1969) of the Group of Seven in Vancouver and then lived in Toronto (1936 – 1955) and in London (1959 – 1969). He was a a member of the Canadian Society of Graphic Art and its president and a member of the Californian Watercolour Society. He exhibited with the Art Association of Montreal, the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, the Ontario Society of Artists and the American Watercolour Society. He had solo exhibitions at Staditsches Museum Wuppertal, Germany in 1957, The Manor House Gallery in Ilkley in 1962 and at The Arts Council, Karachi, Parkistan in 1964. He exhibited at the New Vision Gallery in London between 1958 and 1965, at the Grosvenor Gallery London in 1961, the Stone Gallery, Newcastle in 1962, Heal’s Gallery, London in 1964 and the Nicholas Treadwell Gallery, London in 1965. Newcombe’s works are in the permanent collections of the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, The Art Gallery of Ontario, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Massachusetts, the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester and the Government Art Collection Great Britain.
