Event Images
- Artist
- Kenneth Graham
- Birth and death dates
- 1900 - 1979
- Active dates:
- [Blank]
Barnsley artist Kenneth Graham is well known for his pen and ink drawings of Barnsley town centre public houses. There are fifteen of the forty six here in the Cooper Gallery collection.
Through his series of 46 pen sketches of Barnsley and the surrounding areas, published in the Barnsley Chronicle in 1932, he showed quaint alleyways, detailed buildings and popular places of interest.
Kenneth Graham wrote; 'In therefore recording in that year, for the first time, our town and district by means of pen and ink drawings, the readers of the "Chronicle" found many of the subjects to be unique in architectural beauty and typical of the craftsmen of the district whose workmanship and artistry had been neglected by all writers and illustrators of Yorkshire's charms.'
Graham started painting at seven years old, and by the age of sixteen was exhibiting and selling his work. Throughout the 1920s and 30s he developed his skills as a designer, painter and illustrator, and he rose to Chief Designer at Wood Brothers Glass Company at Hoyle Mill from 19261938. In 1938 he relocated to London to take on the role of Creative Manager for Coty's perfumery, meanwhile becoming a prolific painter of London scenes. Whilst in London, Graham wrote for various magazines including The Glass Container and The Glass Packer, contributing his wealth of knowledge on various aspects of glass design and manufacture. He also published his own magazine The Collector, from the Da Vinci Gallery which he owned in St James's, London, and from where he carried out restoration work.
Graham was widely known throughout Yorkshire in the late 1920s and 1930s, and during this time he recorded an important amount of drawings, etchings and paintings of our region, for viewers of today to glimpse at a very different Barnsley.
Graham retired to Suffolk in 1973 and died in 1979.
BMBC.1999.17
