Kenneth Rowntree was an oil and watercolour painter, mostly of landscape and buildings, and a decorator and illustrator. He was born in Scarborough in 1915, and went on to study at the Ruskin School, Oxford, from 1930 under Albert Rutherston. He then studied at the Slade School under Schwabe until 1935, after which he worked for the Pilgrim Trust in 1941 for their 'Recording Britain' scheme. During the Second World War he was appointed Official War Artist. His first solo exhibition was held in 1946 at the Leicester Galleries. He became a member of the Society of Mural Painters in 1943, and an Associate Member of the Royal Watercolour Society in 1946. From 1948 he taught mural painting at the Royal College of Art for ten years, having made murals for the Barclay School in Stevenage in 1946, R.M.S. Orsova and Iberia in 1954, and at the British Pavilion at the Brussels International Exhibition in 1958. He illustrated A Prospect of Wales in 1948, and in 1959 was made Professor of Fine Art at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Rowntree died in 1997.
