The end of the painting day for my husband, Eric Rimmington, who has died aged 98, marked the only descent from the first floor studio to our scullery.
There he would wash his hair with olive oil soap, which came in yellow wedges embossed with the word “Massile” and which – as he encountered many things in his daily life – could also serve in turn in one of his paintings.
Born in Portsmouth to Charlie Rimmington, a naval engineer, and Mabel (nee Bowman), a seamstress, Eric attended a South, then South, secondary school for boys. Art College His studies focused on watching and drawing, but were interrupted in 1944 by his call for World War II, and service in the Far East. On his return, he completed the course, then began to do a diploma in fine art at the Slade School of Fine Art, graduating in 1952.
He had married Margaret MacVey, a secretary, in 1947, and already with a young daughter, Clare, took up teaching at Scarborough College of Art (1952-58). Over the next 30 years he taught at Bradford College of Art (1958-66), Birmingham College of Art and Design, as a senior lecturer (1966-69), and Wolverhampton Polytechnic, where he was senior lecturer and teacher in the course. painting (1969-82). In these decades he continued to pursue his art.
We met in Wolverhampton, where I was teaching art history, and following Margaret’s separation we set up home together. For a year in the US, Eric was teaching at the University of Wisconsin-Stout. Eric found the atmosphere refreshingly free from the prescriptive sentiments that dominated the British art world.
Back in England, first in Worcester, and finally living in Hackney, East London, Eric, from long and close observation, felt the need to fight again. “The selection of things on the shelf placed in the hands” became the arena through which he explored the world. He came to be recognized by critics as William Packer, “one of our most eminent expositors still alive.”
He was also a remarkable magician who works in pencil and graphite. Summers were spent in the studio, painting the transport aids at the King’s Cross; the filter of the Areola at Haringey; Hackney district of Dalston and the North London railway line in Mildmay.
From the early 1980s he exhibited regularly, initially at the Mercury Gallery, Cork Street, then at the Bohun Gallery, Henley-on-Thames, and the Millinery Works in Islington. Over three decades, he had thirty solo shows and a group of more. His works have been acquired by various private and public collections, including Bradford City Art Gallery, the Imperial War Museum and the Gulbenkian Foundation.
In 1994. Eric is survived by us, Clare, and three grandchildren, eight great-grandchildren, two great-great-grandchildren.