Biography
Patrick Stewart Symons RA (b. Bromley, Kent, UK 1925 - d. Paris France 1993) was educated at Bryanston, in Dorset, where he was taught by Elizabeth Muntz. He studied at Goldsmiths’ College and Camberwell School of Art under John Dodgson and the Euston Road painters. He taught at Camberwell School of Art, St Albans School of Art (1953-9) and Chelsea School of Art (1959-86), where he ran the foundation course. In 1957 he was included in Jack Beddington’s book Young Artists of Promise, in which his portrait of the painter Tony Eyton was illustrated. He showed at RA Summer Exhibitions from 1969, one painting winning the Picture of the Year Award in 1990, the year before he was elected RA. Symons showed a singular understanding of the mathematical and geometric properties of classical composition and copied the Baptism (NG) by Piero della Francesca in which he analysed its structure afresh. Also exhibited at John Moores Liverpool Exhibition in 1974 and several times at Hayward Gallery, including Hayward Annual, 1979. Symons’ first solo show was at New Art Centre in 1960, followed by one at William Darby in 1975, and two at Browse & Darby in 1982–9, and it held an exhibition after his death, in 1994. In 2005, Browse & Darby Gallery included Symons’ work with that of Myles Murphy and Euan Uglow in Three Points of View. At Ryme Intrinseca, Dorset, Symons converted a Victorian school building into a studio, where he hung his big landscapes, painstakingly created and informed by his encyclopaedic knowledge of botany and where he held musical groups. He was killed in a street accident in Paris on a visit with his students.
