David Murray Urquhart Portrait Paintings

David Murray Urquhart was born in Kirkcudbrightshire, Scotland. He had a very varied training as a painter. He studied at the Edinburgh College of Art, Slade School of Fine Art and the Westminster School of Art, where he was tutored by Walter Sickert, whose influence is clearly evident in his subsequent work. Later, he studied at William Frank Calderon’s School of Animal Painting and finally at the Académie Julian under J-P Laurens. One of the most striking features of Urquhart’s work was his adoption of the contre-jour, where the light is made to glow through the use of a modified palette of pointillism. Indeed, The Travelling Circus bears a bold testament to this technique. Urquhart exhibited extensively at the Royal Society of British Artists, of which he was a member, and also the Lefevre Gallery, Walker’s Gallery, the Royal Academy of Arts and the New English Art Club. He died in 1972.