23 Facts About Bernard Meninsky

Bernard Meninsky was a British painter of figures and landscapes in oils, watercolour and gouache, a draughtsman and a teacher.

Bernard Meninsky studied there from 1906 to 1911, being financed by a succession of scholarships.

Bernard Meninsky attended summer courses at the Royal College of Art, London, in August 1909 and August 1910, and in 1911 he won a scholarship to study at the Academie Julian in Paris for three months.

Burridge, had been head of the Liverpool School of Art when Bernard Meninsky had been a prize-winning student there.

Bernard Meninsky had enlisted as a private in the Royal Fusiliers in January 1918, and worked in a clerical capacity in the regiment.

Bernard Meninsky applied to be a war artist under the scheme run by the British War Memorials Committee, and was released from military duties for an initial four-month period from May 1918.

Bernard Meninsky was discharged from military service in August 1918, due to neurasthenia.

Bernard Meninsky completed The Arrival of a Leave Train, Victoria Station, 1918 and at least five other related works before the end of 1918, all of which are now in the Imperial War Museum collection.

When it came to light that Bernard Meninsky was still on the BWMC contract, he was required to extend his involvement with the war artist scheme for a further period.

When he was elected to the London Group in 1919, he exhibited an oil painting on this subject at their April 1919 exhibition, and an exhibition of 'Maternity and Other Figure Subjects by Bernard Meninsky' was held at the Goupil Gallery, Regent Street, London, in May 1919, leading to the publication of Mother and Child: Twenty-Eight Drawings by Bernard Meninsky by the publisher John Lane in the following year.

When Philip was barely six months old, Margaret Bernard Meninsky walked out on her husband and children.

Bernard Meninsky visited his son Philip from time to time, sometimes with a female companion.

The burden placed on artists such as Bernard Meninsky struggling to support children was immense.

Bernard Meninsky was not in a position to do so, and his offer of paintings and drawings in compensation was rejected.

Nevertheless, Bernard Meninsky's exhibiting career was on the up, and in 1926 he had two solo shows in London: of drawings at the Mayor Gallery and of watercolours at the Lefevre Gallery.

In 1927 Bernard Meninsky had a large show of oil paintings, watercolours and drawings at the Collectors Gallery in Manchester.

That Bernard Meninsky and Nora were both 'strong-willed and sometimes stubborn' contributed to a situation in which the early years of their marriage were tempestuous.

Bernard Meninsky responded well to the treatment, and by the mid-1930s he was able to return to teaching and had an exhibition of watercolours at Zwemmer's Gallery.

Bernard Meninsky explained that 'the work of Picasso, Derain, and Matisse made me realise the unique opportunities which the theatre can give the painter to express himself on a vast scale in terms of colour or light and shade.

Bernard Meninsky's finances became a little more secure in the pre-war 1930s.

Bernard Meninsky secured work at the Oxford City School of Art for himself and Roberts.

Bernard Meninsky's work moved into what can be seen as a final phase that drew upon the visionary dream worlds of William Blake and Samuel Palmer and the pastoral poems of John Milton, whose 'L'Allegro' and 'Il Penseroso' Meninsky was commissioned to illustrate by the publisher Alan Wingate.

Nora Bernard Meninsky bequeathed her collection of her husband's work to the Contemporary Art Society to distribute to regional galleries in the UK and beyond.