Kenneth Webb
Irish Landscape Artist. Biography, Paintings.

Kenneth Webb (b.1927)

One of the leading Irish landscape artists of the mid/late 20th century, Kenneth Webb was born in London, in 1927. He studied drawing and painting at the Cheltenham/Gloucester College of Art (1948-52), exhibiting at the Royal Academy (RA) in 1949 - before becoming Head of Painting at Ulster College of Art, Belfast (1953-60). There, his colleagues included other talented Irish artists including Tom Carr (1909-99), John Luke (1906-75) and Colin Middleton (1910-83). In 1957, Webb founded the Irish school of landscape painting, and over the next 30 years showed his paintings in numerous solo exhibitions in Europe and North America.

Webb worked at Queens' University Belfast From 1960 to 1970, after which he gave lectures at the Victoria and Albert Museum and the National Gallery in London. He has shown his work in numerous Irish art galleries and museums since the early 1950's, holding one-man shows at the Kenny Gallery and the James Gallery, Dublin, every two years. In addition, Webb has exhibited with the Cork Arts Society, the Solomon Gallery and the Oriel Gallery, Dublin, the Royal Ulster Academy of Arts (RUA) and the Metropolis International Gallery d'Art, Geneva. In the UK, he has exhibited at the Royal Academy, the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours (RI), Belgrave Gallery, London and the Wren Gallery, Oxford. He has also regularly exhibited at the Royal West of England Academy (RWA). Acknowledged influences in his approach to landscape art, include the English Romantic Landscape artists from William Blake to the present day. Graham Sutherland, Paul Nash and Ivan Hitchens are also key influences.

Kenneth Webb has enjoyed several retrospective exhibitions, at such venues as: Mall Galleries, London (1972); Alexander Gallery, Bristol (1972); Kenny Gallery, Galway (1990), and was the subject of a 1999 award winning film documentary "Kenneth Webb - A Life in Colour" Made by Donal Haughey. Webb's works are represented in public and private collections of Irish art throughout the Republic and in the United Kingdom.

Auction Record For Kenneth Webb

The highest price paid at auction for a work by Kenneth Webb was recorded in 2005, when his Galway - City of Tribes series, was sold at Whytes, in Dublin, for €132,000.

More Information About Visual Arts in Ireland

• For more about landscape artists like Kenneth Webb, see: Irish Art Guide.
• For more about plein-air painting, see: Homepage.