Blair Hughes-Stanton 1902-1981

Blair Hughes-Stanton is best remembered as a leading British wood engraver, but he also produced a striking body of paintings that reveal another side to his talent. The son of painter Sir Herbert Hughes-Stanton, he trained at the Royal Academy Schools and with Leon Underwood, where he absorbed a modern approach to both drawing and design. His paintings of this period, often with bold colour and a strongly rhythmic composition, shared the energy of his engravings while exploring broader themes of landscape, figure and allegory. These works, though less widely known, show him as a painter engaged with the visual experimentation of his generation.

Hughes-Stanton moved in an artistic circle that connected him to some of the most influential British and European figures of the time. His friendship with Leon Underwood linked him to Henry Moore, while his collaborations with literary figures such as D. H. Lawrence placed him within the wider cultural avant-garde. In painting, as in print, he combined technical assurance with a decorative, almost modernist sense of pattern, producing canvases that resonate with the wider European developments of the 1930s.

Examples of his work are held in public collections including Tate and the Ingram Collection of Modern British Art. His paintings, in particular, remain a less explored but rewarding strand of his career—works that balance expressive force with visual appeal. For those looking for twentieth-century British art beyond the most familiar names, Hughes-Stanton’s work offers an intriguing opportunity to engage with a versatile artist who produced some fantastic imagery.