British painter, illustrator, and writer.
Born to a Quaker family in Ringwood, Hampshire, Armfield was educated at Sidcot School and at Leighton Park School. In 1887 he was admitted to Birmingham School of Art, then under the headmastership of Edward R. Taylor and established as a major centre of the Arts and Crafts Movement. There he studied under Henry Payne and Arthur Gaskin and, outside the school, received instruction in tempera painting from Joseph Southall at Southall's studio in Edgbaston.
He was later to recall:
“ Apart from invaluable benefit from guidance and advice from such masters as Henry Payne, Arthur Gaskin and Joseph Southall, I really taught myself, as must anyone who hopes to do individual work... I detested the Life Class, and rarely attended it: I refused to learn perspective or anatomy as they bored me, and generally, I could not have been a worse student. ”
Leaving Birmingham in 1902, he moved to Paris to study at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière under Gustave Courtois and René Menard, where he became an associate of Gaston Lachaise, Keith Henderson, and Norman Wilkinson. He exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1904, where his painting 'Faustine' was bought by the French State and donated to the Musée du Luxembourg and is now in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris.
In 1909 he married the author and playwright Constance Smedley who was a first cousin of his friend and fellow artist William Smedley-Aston and his wife Irene, and, like many with connections to the Arts and Crafts Movement in Birmingham, settled in the Cotswolds. In 1911, they both appear on the census of that year as being resident in Minchinhampton, Gloucestershire. The couple became close collaborators: working together to combine design, illustration, text and theatre, including in their 'Flower Book' (1910). Armfield's wife also influenced him to become a pacifist and Christian Scientist. From 1915 the couple spent seven years in the United States and the couple were together until her death in 1941.
His mastery of tempera paint allowed him to write two books on the subject—'A Manual of Tempera Painting' (1930) and 'Tempera Painting Today' (1946), published by the Pentagon Press. After Constance's death, Armfield became interested in mysticism and eastern religions, writing on these subjects under pseudonyms. He was virtually forgotten for many years after the Second World War, but he lived long enough to see a revival of interest in his work, expressed particularly in an exhibition ‘Homage to Maxwell Armfield’ at the Fine Art Society, London, in 1970.
A detail from Armfield's painting 'Self-Portrait' (1901; Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery), was used as the cover illustration of the Oxford World's Classics 2006 edition of 'The Picture of Dorian Gray'. His 1917 'Domesticated Mural Painting' was used as cover artwork for the 1969 Fleetwood Mac album, 'Then Play On'.
Armfield has paintings in the collection of several British institutions including the Tate Collection; National Portrait Gallery; Government Art Collection; Royal Watercolour Society; Girton College, University of Cambridge; Victoria Art Gallery, Bath; Southampton City Art Gallery; Birmingham Museum; Nottingham Castle Museum and Gallery; Derby Museum and Art Gallery; and the Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum.
