My father, Jack Crabtree, who has died aged 87, was a figurative painter whose work gave dignity to people whose lives were often overlooked. He developed a distinctive form of social realism, rooted in his working-class upbringing and driven by a belief that every person had a story worth telling. He painted miners, steelworkers, industrial communities and ordinary people caught up in extraordinary circumstances.
Born in Rochdale, the son of Lilian, a cotton mill worker, and Roland Crabtree, a labourer at the gasworks, Jack discovered art almost by accident. A schoolteacher at Rochdale grammar school for boys encouraged him to try the subject, and a scholarship eventually took him from Rochdale College of Art in 1955 to St Martin’s School of Art in 1957, then the Royal Academy Schools from 1959 to 1961.
