16 Facts About Cyril Power

Cyril Edward Power was an English artist best known for his linocut prints, long-standing artistic partnership with artist Sybil Andrews and for co-founding the Grosvenor School of Modern Art in London in 1925.

Cyril Edward Power was born on 17 December 1872 in Redcliffe Street, Chelsea, the eldest child of Edward William Power who encouraged him to draw from an early age.

Cyril Power worked as an architect at the Ministry of Works under Sir Richard Allington and was involved with the design and construction of the General Post Office, King Edward VII Building and the Post Office at the corner of Exhibition Road and Imperial College, Kensington, London.

Cyril Power designed and executed a War Memorial for the Great Western Railway at Paddington, London around this time.

In 1918, Cyril Power met Sybil Andrews, with whom he maintained a working relationship which lasted some 20 years.

Cyril Power's youngest son Edmund was born in December 1921, in Bury St Edmunds.

Cyril Power helped Iain McNab and Claude Flight set up The Grosvenor School of Modern Art in Warwick Square, London with Andrews becoming the School Secretary.

Cyril Power was a principal lecturer, typically on the subjects of: The Form and Structure of Buildings, Historical Ornament and Symbolism and Outline of Architectural Styles and Frank Rutter, the art critic, on Modern Painters from Cezanne to Picasso.

Cyril Power's classes were attended by his colleagues, Power and Andrews, and students that came from as far afield as Australia and New Zealand, attracted by the advertisements in The Studio magazine.

In 1930 Cyril Power was elected member of the Royal Society of British Artists and established a studio with Andrews in Hammersmith close to the River Thames, a location which inspired many prints by both artists, most notably 'The Eight' by Cyril Power and 'Bringing in the Boat' by Sybil Andrews.

Cyril Power met and married shipyard worker Walter Morgan during the war in 1943, and emigrated to Canada with him four years later.

Cyril Power rejoined his family, who had just moved from Hertfordshire to New Malden in Surrey.

In September 1939, at the outbreak of World War II, Cyril Power was attached to a Heavy Rescue Squad as a surveyor, based at Wandsworth Town Hall.

Cyril Power continued drawing and painting, tending to work principally in oils using a palette knife technique.

Cyril Power spent time lecturing on painting and linocutting to the local art society at New Malden and at Kingston-Upon-Thames.

Cyril Power died in London in May 1951, aged seventy-eight.