Tim Dolby - Retrospective

10am to 4pm
Wednesday 26 March to Sunday 6 April
Free admission. No need to book.
A celebration of the life and work of Tim Dolby with 20% of all sale proceeds to be donated to the Princess Alice Hospice where Tim passed away in May 2022.
Tim was born in Walton Upon Thames, Surrey on 6 th January 1954. He was one of life’s ‘natural born’ artists, passionate about nature, the landscape and the natural surroundings in which we live and breathe. He loved painting the everyday objects we commonly take for granted, detailing the minutiae of an intricate flower, an insect’s wing or a field of sunflowers.
By developing and refining his creative and artistic skills from his early teenage years, he was not only one of Britain’s leading landscape and still life artists, but a specialist and highly skilled restorer of oil and watercolour paintings, creator of huge painted murals, a miniaturist and one whose fine eye helped him to devise many other exquisite objets.
Tim worked learning how to mount and frame pictures and studied painting conservation in the 80’s under the tutelage of John Brangwyn, conservator of paintings at Hampton Court Palace. He ran his acclaimed conservation/restoration practice and art studio at his home in Dorking, Surrey until his untimely death in May 2022 and throughout his life, was passionate about all forms of art, not only in its modern form but also in the preservation of the existing masters.
Tim’s acclaimed landscape paintings have featured across renowned galleries and exhibitions over the past 50 years including Royal Academy Summer Exhibitions, The Miniature Society, The Marine Society, The Royal Society of Portrait Painters and the Institute of Watercolour Painters. Throughout the years he mounted over 17 one man shows, including an exhibition in Paris where he won the Pro Art prize for his painting of the ‘Discerning Eye’, along with exhibiting at the Mall Galleries in the 90’s with an exhibition of his first Verre Églomisé paintings. His Surrey exhibitions – always an event - famously attracted long queues to his Private Views for over an hour before their openings as his collectors vied to secure their favourite pieces.
Tim specialised in miniature paintings, particularly ink on ivory and watercolour on vellum, which drew on the fine and detailed work he practised as a picture restorer. Still life miniatures painted in the traditional genre, were a mark of his craft, with his observation and detail displayed in his minute brushstrokes, picking up every nuance of light and colour. He also created larger watercolours on vellum which were exemplified in his Paintings of Venice for example.
Travelling extensively, never without a sketchbook, Tim’s landscape paintings , flowers, plants and nature, often done en plein air, were important features of his extraordinary painterly skills. He used watercolour, oils and more recently, more abstract forms of medium such as acrylics and glass.
In his later years, he experimented in mediums using enamel paints on glass, backed with gold and silver leaf; an old French technique called  Verre Églomisé . This technique combined gilding on the back of glass which produces a depth of colour unobtainable in other ways. Unfailingly modest about his talent, Tim declined many opportunities to become attached to a gallery or agent, preferring the independence and less interested in the rewards. He did, though, enjoy many years teaching amateur artists and his time with old friend, Hannah Gordon, co-presenting a television art programme, Water Colour Challenge. His easy manner would have led to more such appearances but for Tim, freedom to paint as and when he chose was always the imperative.
Another fun string to his bow was being commissioned to produce ‘fake’ Old Masters, portraits and paintings for television drama programmes against tight deadlines. Designer, handyman, home maker, animal-lover, carpenter, but particularly wonderful friend and talented artist ,Tim could probably have turned his hand to anything which took his fancy, had he been allowed the time.
We celebrate the fact that his prolific work remains as a wonderful memorial to a hugely talented artist by enhancing many private homes and grand palaces throughout the world
20% of all sale proceeds to be donated to the Princess Alice Hospice.