Often hailed as Britain’s most famous and controversial art critic, Brian Sewell (OH 1949) died aged 84 on 19 September 2015, having been diagnosed with cancer last year.
Sewell attended Haberdashers at Westbere Road and frequently referred in autobiographical articles to his time at the school.
Earlier this year in an article in the Daily Telegraph, Sewell remarked: “I am the little one in the back row [far right] of this photograph, next to Gainsborough, the captain. I am 16. We (Meadows) have just won the school’s inter-house seven-a-side competition, a fleeter form of rugby in which scrums and line-outs are over in a moment, and fast running and flying tackles are the order of the day. We are on the school’s playing fields at Chase Lodge, Mill Hill. Most of us have cycled the five miles from Hampstead.
At school we played each other on Wednesdays and teams from kindred schools on Saturdays.
I had some aptitude for rugger and enjoyed it. There were fewer rules then (or referees were less pernickety) and the game had a fluency that it lacks now. We were also lighter and less likely to be injured in a collapsing scrum or by a brutal tackle.”
Of his teachers, he reported: “I realise now that a handful of masters in English and history could not have been better, but those attempting to teach me physics were wasting their time and mine. Education should be based on aptitude, not compulsion. Were I at school now, I would sink without trace.”
After Haberdashers, he turned down a place at Oxford University to study at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London. His tutor at the Courtauld was Anthony Blunt, the art expert and Soviet spy. The two went on to become friends, Sewell reputedly assisting to shelter Blunt at his house in Chiswick when it became known that he was The Fourth Man in the Cambridge Spy Ring.
After graduating , he worked for Christie’s auction house after graduating and joined the Evening Standard in 1984, writing for the paper until June 2015.
His controversial putdowns, love of fine drawing, knowledge of art history and his refined diction made him one of the UK’s best-known critics. His witty turn of phrase led to regular television appearances, including two turns as a panellist on the BBC game show Have I Got News For You.
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