Roy Nockolds (b.1911; d.1979)

Roy Anthony Nockolds was born in London on January 24 1911. He was a self taught artist apart from taking some private lessons in figure drawing. He began sketching and drawing motoring subjects in the mid 1920’s, contributing illustrations to Autocar, Motor and Motor Sport magazines. Nockolds was described as one of the pioneers of motoring art. Best known as a motoring artist and illustrator, he was in fact a highly versatile painter, whose subjects included marine, aircraft, landscapes, portraits and dog studies. During the Second World War he worked for the Ministry of Information, served in the RAF, and became an official War Artist. Nockolds was personally commissioned to do work for the MOI by Edwin Embleton.

Nockolds exhibited widely, including at the RA in 1949, at the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, and the Royal Society of Marine Artists (RSMA), and held a solo exhibition at the Kensington Art Gallery in 1953, also an exhibition of Dog Paintings at the Trafford Gallery. He showed at the Exhibition of British Achievements in New York in 1960, and became Chairman of the Guild of Aviation artists in 1975. Roy Nockolds died in April 1979, and a Memorial Exhibition of his work was held at the Quantas Gallery, Piccadilly, London, in November 1980.

Information collated from: Collins Antiques, ‘Roy Nockolds’, http://www.collinsantiques.co.uk/Paintings/Watercolours/Watercolours_2/Watercolour…., accessed October 6 2003; The Guild of Motoring Artists, ‘Guide to Purchasing Motoring Art’, http://www.motorart.co.uk/guide.html, accessed October 6 2003; Questionnaire submitted by Royall, K. to Embleton, E., Royall, K., ‘Posters of the Second World War: The Fourth Arm of British Defence’, Unpublished M.A., University of Westminster, 1991, p.123