The end of the painting day for my husband, Eric Rimmington, who has died aged 98, was signalled by a descent from his first-floor studio to our ground-floor scullery.
There he would wash his brushes with olive oil soap, which came in yellow blocks embossed with the word “Marseille” and which – like many objects he encountered in everyday life – might also serve their turn as subject in one of his paintings.
Born in Portsmouth to Charlie Rimmington, a naval engine room artificer, and Mabel (nee Bowman), a seamstress, Eric attended Southern secondary school for boys, then the Southern Art College. His studies focused on looking and drawing, but were interrupted in 1944 by his call-up for the second world war, and service in the far east. On his return, he completed the course, then went on to do a diploma in fine art at the Slade School of Fine Art, graduating in 1952.
He had married Margaret MacVey, a secretary, in 1947, and now with a small daughter, Clare, he took up a teaching post at Scarborough College of Art (1952-58). Over the next30 years he was to teach at Bradford College of Art (1958-66), Birmingham College of Art and Design, as a senior lecturer (1966-69), and Wolverhampton Polytechnic, where he was principal lecturer and senior course tutor in painting (1969-82). Throughout these decades he continued to pursue his own art.
We met in Wolverhampton, where I was teaching history of art, and, following his separation from Margaret, we set up home together. We spent a year in the US, Eric teaching at the University of Wisconsin-Stout. Eric found an atmosphere refreshingly free of the prescriptive attitudes that dominated the British art world.
Back in England, first in Worcester, eventually settling in Hackney, east London, Eric felt able to re-engage with working from long and close observation. “A selection of objects set up on a shelf within hand’s reach” became the arena through which he would explore the world. He came to be acknowledged, by critics such as William Packer, as “one of our most distinguished exponents of still life”.
He was also a remarkable draughtsman, working in pencil and graphite. Summers would be spent out of the studio, depicting the derelict freight sidings at King’s Cross; the filter beds at Haringey; Hackney’s Dalston area and the North London railway line at Mildmay.
From the early 1980s he exhibited regularly, initially at the Mercury Gallery, Cork Street, then at the Bohun Gallery, Henley-on-Thames, and the Millinery Works in Islington. Over three decades he had more than 30 solo and numerous group exhibitions. His works were acquired by various private and public collections, including Bradford City Art Gallery, the Imperial War Museum, and the Gulbenkian Foundation.
We married in 1994. Eric is survived by me, Clare, and by three grandchildren, eight great-grandchildren, and two great-great-grandchildren.
