Monnington, Sir Thomas

Monnington, Sir Thomas (1902–1976). British painter. He was born in London, the son of a barrister, and studied at the Slade School, 1918–23. Winner of the Rome Scholarship in 1923, he spent most of the next three years in Italy, and there painted the work with which he established his reputation, a large enigmatic figure painting entitled Allegory, which was bought by the Contemporary Art Society and presented to the Tate Gallery. Back in England, he made a name for himself as a decorative painter with commissions for St Stephen's Hall in the Palace of Westminster (1927) and the Bank of England (1928–37), whilst also working as a portraitist and teaching part-time at the Royal Academy Schools and the Royal College of Art. During the Second World War he designed camouflage and was an Official War Artist. He taught at Camberwell School of Art, 1946–9, and at the Slade School, 1949–67. In the 1950s he began producing geometric abstract paintings, including a huge ceiling for the Conference Hall of Bristol Council House (1956), symbolizing progress in nuclear physics, electronics, aeronautics, and biochemistry. From 1966 until his death he was a popular and successful president of the Royal Academy; he was chiefly responsible for opening the Academy's private rooms and their treasures to the public, and his major achievement, in the words of his obituary in The Times, was ‘to bring the Academy into a closer relationship with the contemporary scene'. A memorial exhibition of Monnington's work was held at the Royal Academy in 1977; in the catalogue his successor as president, Sir Hugh Casson, wrote that he was ‘remembered and loved by everybody in the world of art'.

Monnington's first wife, Winifred Knights (1899–1947), was also a painter, mainly of figure subjects. She studied at the Slade School, won the Rome Scholarship in 1920, and married Monnington in Rome in 1924. Her most characteristic works were large decorative compositions, including The Marriage at Cana for the British School in Rome (now in the NG of New Zealand, Wellington).