My cousin Harold Mockford, who has died aged 91, was a greatly admired Sussex artist whose distinctive paintings will be remembered for the deep colours of their land, sea, and townscapes. His portraits of his home life and the deaths of his father and mother are particularly poignant.
Between 1959 and 2012 he produced a formidable body of work, exhibiting in London galleries and across south-east England. His paintings are held in various collections including those of Tate Britain and the Towner art gallery in Eastbourne, and the Government Art Collection. In 1993, at the Brighton Open Painting Exhibition, he won the overall prize for outstanding work.
Born in Eastbourne, East Sussex, Harold was the twin brother of Doreen and the son of Marjorie (nee Collett), a former housemaid, and William Mockford, a bricklayer. Recognising Harold’s early talent for drawing, his teacher at St Mary’s school persuaded him to attend Saturday morning art classes at the local Towner gallery.
After a period of evacuation during the second world war, at 14 Harold left St Mary’s to be an apprentice dental mechanic, joined a youth club and met his future wife, Margaret Beney. They married in 1954, when she had finished her teacher training. Margaret became an integral and crucial part of Harold’s career as a painter.
Mainly self-taught, Harold attended evening classes and worked full-time while raising a family with Margaret. Four out of their five children were born in a small Victorian terrace house. Harold used hardboard on the floor to paint and, invariably, repaint on. He joined the Eastbourne Society of Artists, who held an annual exhibition.
In 1958, William Gear, an artist and curator of the Towner gallery, bought the gallery’s first Mockford, an abstract called Eastbourne. It caused a public furore. Councillors and members of the public were reported to consider it a waste of public money and a misrepresentation of the town, but the Eastbourne Gazette reported that Harold had “a rare burning dedication”.
In 1959 Gear curated a solo exhibition. Three fellow artists offered Harold studio space at the top of their house. Later, in 1996, he moved to Newhaven, where a garage became his studio.
In 2012 Towner held a major retrospective celebrating the artist’s 80th birthday. In the London magazine, David Buckman observed: “Mockford’s work needs to be placed in the broadest context of British art to receive the national recognition it deserves.”
Margaret died in 2015. Harold is survived by their children, Jeremy, Sally, Polly, Simon and Mark, seven grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
