Piper, John

Piper, John (1903–1992). British painter, printmaker, draughtsman, designer, and writer, born at Epsom, Surrey, the son of a solicitor. He reluctantly became an articled clerk in his father's legal firm, but after his father's death in 1926 he studied at Richmond School of Art and then the Royal College of Art, 1926–8. From 1928 to 1933 he wrote art criticism for the Listener and the Nation, and he was among the first to recognize such contemporaries as William Coldstream, Ivon Hitchens, Victor Pasmore, and Ceri Richards. He became a member of the London Group in 1933 and of the Seven & Five Society in 1934. Also in 1934 he met the writer Myfanwy Evans (1911–97) and soon afterwards began assisting her on the avant-garde quarterly Axis, which was launched in 1935. Evans became Piper's second wife in 1937. At this time he was one of the leading British abstract artists, but by the end of the decade he had become disillusioned with non-representational art and reverted to naturalism. He concentrated on landscape and architectural views in a subjective, emotionally charged style that continued the English Romantic tradition. Some of his most memorable works in this vein were done during the Second World War when he made pictures (watercolours as well as oils) of bomb-damaged buildings for the ‘Recording Britain’ scheme and for the War Artists' Advisory Committee (it was not until 1944, however, that he was actually appointed an Official War Artist). A similar stormy atmosphere pervades his famous views of country houses of the same period, which were done either for himself or on private commission; for example, he made a series of paintings of Renishaw Hall, Derbyshire, for Sir Osbert Sitwell.

Piper's work diversified in the 1950s and he became recognized as one of the most versatile British artists of his generation. He did much work as a designer of stained glass (notably at Coventry Cathedral) and also for the stage. His stage designs included sets for several Benjamin Britten operas, beginning with The Rape of Lucretia (1946); Myfanwy Evans wrote the librettos for three of the Britten operas her husband designed—The Turn of the Screw (1951), Owen Wingrave (1970), and Death in Venice (1973). In addition Piper made book illustrations and designed pottery and textiles, including a tapestry in Chichester Cathedral (1966). As a writer he is probably best known for his book British Romantic Artists (1942). He also compiled several architectural guidebooks to English counties (Oxfordshire, 1938; Shropshire, 1939; Buckinghamshire, 1948; Berkshire, 1949), usually in collaboration with his friend the poet Sir John Betjeman. Betjeman wrote a book on Piper in the ‘Penguin Modern Painters’ series (1944). Piper's work is extensively represented in the Tate Gallery, London. His son Edward Piper (1938–1990) was a painter, photographer, and graphic designer.