1. Kyffin Williams was born in Llangefni, Anglesey, one of two sons into an old landed Anglesey family.
20 Facts About Kyffin Williams
1. 2.
Kyffin Williams wrote that his mother was an emotionally repressed woman who had a virulent dislike of the Welsh and the Welsh language.
3.
Kyffin Williams was educated at Moreton Hall School, Trearddur House School in Anglesey, then at Shrewsbury School where he contracted polio encephalitis which led him to develop epilepsy, a misfortune he later described as "my greatest fortune".
4.
Kyffin Williams joined the 6th Battalion Royal Welch Fusiliers as a lieutenant in 1937.
5.
Kyffin Williams enrolled at London's Slade School of Fine Art in 1941, gaining prizes for portraiture at the end of both his second and third years.
6.
Kyffin Williams then achieved his ambition to teach art by accepting a position at Highgate School, London, where he was senior art master from 1944 until 1973.
7.
Kyffin Williams's pupils included the historian Sir Martin Gilbert, Royal Academicians Anthony Green and Patrick Procktor and composers John Tavener and John Rutter.
8.
Kyffin Williams painted a portrait of the school's cricket coach, former test player Albert Knight.
9.
Kyffin Williams was predominately a landscape painter but he was an accomplished portraitist and something of a cartoonist.
10.
On retiring from Highgate school Kyffin Williams returned to Anglesey and spent the next 30 years painting, and promoting Welsh schools of Art and Welsh art in general.
11.
Never having married, Kyffin Williams died, without heirs, on 1 September 2006, aged 88, at St Tysilio Nursing Home on Anglesey.
12.
Kyffin Williams had been at the home on the outskirts of Llanfairpwll for just over a week after spending two weeks as a patient at Ysbyty Gwynedd, Bangor.
13.
Kyffin Williams had been suffering from prostate cancer and from lung cancer, believed to be a result of working with lead-based paints.
14.
In 1949 Kyffin Williams had his first one-man-show at a private gallery in London.
15.
Kyffin Williams was president of the Royal Cambrian Academy and was appointed a member of the Royal Academy in 1974.
16.
In 1995 Kyffin Williams received the Glyndwr Award for an Outstanding Contribution to the Arts in Wales during the Machynlleth Festival.
17.
Kyffin Williams was awarded the OBE for his services to the arts in 1982 and was knighted in 1999.
18.
Kyffin Williams was a great raconteur and a fine writer, publishing his autobiography in "Across the Straits" and "A wider sky".
19.
Examples of Kyffin Williams' works are held in other public collections, including the Government Art Collection, the Arts Council Collection and the National Museum of Wales.
20.
Kyffin Williams' work is in the collections of a number of Welsh museums and galleries, but particularly at the Oriel Mon gallery in Rhosmeirch, Llangefni on Anglesey.