1928 Born in Norwich, 30 October
1949 - 53 Studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, London, under William Coldstream
1953 Received Rome Scholarship in Painting
1959 Taught at Norwich School of Art
1960 Taught at Chelsea School of Art, London
1963 - 66 Taught at the Slade School of Fine Art
1973 Invited to use Visitor’s Studio at the Royal College of Art, London
1975 First visited Scotland
1977 - 92 Lived in Norfolk
1983 Visited Ayres Rock, Australia
1988 - 89 Trustee of the National Gallery, London
1992 Returned to London
1995 Died in London, 19 July

This is the first memorial exhibition (Timothy Taylor Gallery, London, May - June 1998) of paintings by Michael Andrews (1928 - 1995). Interestingly the exhibition takes place exactly forty years after his first solo show in the Beaux Arts Gallery at 1 Bruton Place W1, the building now occupied by the Timothy Taylor Gallery.

Born in Norwich in 1928, Andrews studied at the Slade School of Art from 1949-52 under William Coldstream. From 1954 he exhibited at the Beaux Arts Gallery run by Helen Lessore, moving to Marlborough Fine Art in 1968 when she closed the gallery. In 1972 he left Marlborough with his friend Lucian Freud to be represented jointly by James Kirkman and Anthony d’Offay. He had his first major retrospective at the Hayward Gallery In 1981 which traveled to the Fruit Market Gallery in Edinburgh and the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester. His last one-man exhibition was in 1991 at the Whitechapel Gallery. It traveled to Paris, Edinburgh and New York.

There are three Thames paintings and this will be the first opportunity to see them exhibited together.

‘I want an actual present atmosphere in my painting . I don’t mind how I get it’.

The Thames at Low tide 1994 is basically the view to the west looking down from Albert bridge, twenty years earlier. A painting of silting and draining away. Partly painted on the floor, with tides of turps and deposits of sediment it is both literal and illusionistic.

Thames Painting: The Estuary 1994 is his finale. The ground is stained and raddled, muddied and tied marked. A view from a sea wall at Canvey Island?, a group of stocky late Victorians on the end of a jetty are part of a painting that can be either opaque and bleak or radiant and airy

The Source of the Thames 1995 is far from finished......or is it? The light is there, the density of the river bank, the roughing up, the greens thrashed with Norfolk grasses and the subject, Thames Head in Gloucestshire is clear. This last painting has never been seen before.

"The activity is for me the most marvellous, elaborate, complete way of making up my mind".

The exhibition at Timothy Taylor Gallery has been arranged with the help of June Andrews and is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue with an intimate and comprehensive text by William Feaver.

1958 Beaux Arts Gallery, London
1963 Beaux Arts Gallery, London
1974 Anthony d’Offay Gallery, London
1978 Anthony d’Offay Gallery, London
1980 - 81 Retrospective by Arts Council of Great Britain at Hayward Gallery, London, and tour to the Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh and Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester
1986 Rock of Ages Cleft for Me: Recent Paintings by Michael Andrews, Anthony d’Offay Gallery, London
1991 The Delectable Mountain, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, and tour to Fondation Nationale des Arts Graphiques et Plastiques in Paris, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh, and Grey Art Gallery & Study Center in New York.
1991 Michael Andrews: The Scottish Paintings, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh.

1955 8 Painters, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London
1963 British Painting in the Sixties, Tate Gallery and Whitechapel Art Gallery, London
1964 54-64: Painting and Sculpture of a Decade, Tate Gallery, London
1976 The Human Clay, Hayward Gallery, London
1977 British Painting 1952 - 1977, Royal Academy of Arts, London
1979 - 80 Narrative Painting, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London
1980 The British Art Show, Arts Council of Great Britain, Mappin Art Gallery, Sheffield
1981 Eight Figurative Painters, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven
1984 The Hard-Won Image: Traditional Method and Subject in Recent British Art, Tate Gallery, London
1984 Modern Masters from the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, Royal Academy of Arts, London
1984 - 5 The Proper Study, British Council tour to Lalit Kala Akademy, New Delhi and National Center for Performing Arts, Bombay
1987 British Art in the Twentieth Century, Royal Academy of Arts, London
1987 - 88 A School of London: Six Figurative Painters, British Council touring exhibition to Kunsthernes Hus, Oslo; Louisiana
1988 Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek; Ca Pesano, Venice; and Kunstmuseum, Düsseldorf
1990 The Pursuit of the Real: British Figurative Painting from Sickert to Bacon, Manchester City Art Galleries
1992 - 93 British Figurative Painting of the 20th Century, Israel Museum, Jerusalem
1994 Double Reality: "The School of London", Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo
1995 - 96 From London, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh and tour to Musée Nationale, Luxembourg; Musée de Beaux Arts, Lausanne; La Pedrera, Barcelona

David Sylvester, "Michael Andrews", The Listener, 16 January 1958
Michael Andrews, "Notes and Preoccupations", X: A Quarterly Review, Volume One, no. 2, March 1960
Victor Willing, "Morality and the Model", interview with Michael Andrews, Art and Literature, Paris, summer 1964
Michael Andrews, Statement in Survey 66: Figurative Art, Camden Art Center 1966
John Rothenstein, Modern English Painters, Volume III, London 1974
William Feaver, "Stranded Dinosaurs", London Magazine, July / August 1978
Anne Seymour, Introduction, Michael Andrews: Paintings 1977-78, Anthony d’Offay Gallery, London 1978
Lawrence Gowing, Catherine Lampert, Michael Andrews, Hayward Gallery, London 1980
William Feaver, "Michael Andrews", The Proper Study, British Council 1984
William Feaver, Introduction, Rock of Ages Cleft for Me, Anthony d’Offay Gallery, London 1986
Bruce Bernard, Jonathan Raban, Michael Andrews: "The Delectable Mountain", Whitechapel Art Gallery, London 1991
Richard Calvocoressi, Michael Andrews: The Scottish Paintings, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh 1991
David Cohen, "Grand Living and Quirky Forms" Six Painters of the School of London, From London, catalogue introduction, British
Council 1995
Bruce Bernard, "Painter Friends", From London, catalogue introduction, British Council 1995