Leonard Bennetts; painter & teacher
Hyfler/Rosner
Painter of the changing Thames docklands
05 January 2005
Leonard Kenneth Hammond Bennetts, painter and teacher: born
Dunedin, New Zealand 11 March 1933; married 1962 Olivia
Stembridge (one son, one daughter; marriage dissolved 1980);
died London 24 September 2004.
Leonard Bennetts was one of a trickle of Old Commonwealth
painters who settled in London after the Second World War,
enlivening the arts scene. The largest contingent was
probably Australian, but there were notable representatives
from Canada and New Zealand.
Many returned to their home countries, but Bennetts stayed
on, making an important contribution as a teacher. Although
the landscape of Europe was at the heart of his work, he
retained a strong affection for New Zealand and had a string
of exhibitions at New Zealand House in London.
The reason these incoming artists stayed on after war
service or made the trek to Europe especially was not only
to undertake the grand tour of museums and galleries or to
study but to be close to where they considered the action
was: Paris and, later, London.
Leonard Kenneth Hammond Bennetts was born in 1933 in
Dunedin, South Island, the middle of three sons of Douglas
Bennetts, a motor engineer, and his wife, Evelyn. This was a
sheep-farming, rugby-playing environment in which wanting to
be an artist was considered rather precious. Bennetts was
encouraged by his mother and his maternal grandfather, Henry
Blanchard Hammond, a creator of decorative ceilings in the
UK and New Zealand.
He studied at Canterbury University College, Christchurch,
and then, in 1954, moved to Australia, working for nine
months as a gardener in a mental hospital, making a drawing
tour of the interior and Northern Territory, then spending a
year under Lyndon Dadswell at East Sydney Technical College.
He worked nights in a telephone exchange while participating
in group shows as "Benno", afterwards resorting to his own
name.
Bennetts reached Britain working as a kitchen porter on a
cruise ship. His dream of living the Bohemian life in Paris
would never to be realised, but soon after a first London
show in a pub in Hampstead he hitch-hiked around Western
Europe "drawing everything I laid my eyes on, arriving back
in London gaunt and penniless". With the pictures he had
painted he had a show at Walker's Galleries, Bond Street, in
1959, with another in 1960.
He met the owner of a factory in the Old Kent Road, who let
him live in a studio above it rent-free in return for
keeping an eye on the place. After 18 months there, he began
to establish himself as a professional artist. He married in
1962, and at first the Bennettses lived at Totteridge. A
local pig farm, neighbours' homes and a series of autumnal
landscapes provided subjects. Later he settled in Muswell
Hill, north London inspired by nearby markets, railway
stations and even rubbish tips.
Joining the Chelsea Arts Club and the Hampstead Artists'
Council, he exhibited in mixed shows at such venues as the
Mall Galleries, Whitechapel Art Gallery and the Royal
Academy Summer Exhibition and with the Contemporary Art
Society. The Hesketh Hubbard Art Society awarded him a first
prize. In 1964, he initiated the first show of New Zealand
artists in London, 26 of them showing at the Qantas Airways
Gallery, in Piccadilly.
Bennetts continued to travel widely. When he had a solo
exhibition at New Zealand House in 1976 the more than 60
oils included impressions of France, Wales, Devon, London
and the River Thames. He was one of the first to realise
that the Thames docklands were set for a big makeover. "He
was on a mission to record what was there before it changed
forever," says his former wife Olivia Bennetts. It was
appropriate that in 1997 he became a member of the Wapping
Group of Artists, devoted to the river.
For a time Bennetts was a night-time Post Office telephones
supervisor, enabling him to paint during the day. He also
taught at Hendon College, 1968-92, Barnet College, 1977-82,
and at the Working Men's College, 1995-96.
"Leonard was a driven artist, never satisfied, always
pushing his work on," says Olivia. This prompted him to
enrol for further part- and full-time study at Sir John Cass
College, 1975-82, taught by that fine draughtsman and etcher
Paul Drury, also learning for a year, 1984-85, with the
visionary painter Cecil Collins.
Although now middle-aged, Bennetts found being a student
again invaluable. Sir John Cass steered him towards portrait
and figure painting, which formed the bulk of his 1979 New
Zealand High Commission show.
Bennetts, this time as Ken Bennetts, was included in the
important 1983 Hayward Gallery touring exhibition "Landscape
in Britain 1850-1950". He still had a hankering to see the
rugged, landscape of New Zealand again, but it was 1987,
after almost 40 years, before he returned, the first of
several trips. The Timaru Herald commented that he was "a
bit of a picture himself, in straw hat, striking crimson
shirt, shorts and iridescent green socks".
He took the opportunity to paint the landscape and buildings
of Temuka, where he once went to school, as in London
docklands capturing views before they disappeared. Writing a
year ago at the time of his last major show, at New Zealand
House, Bennetts described himself as "the original
retrogressionist (the way forwards is backwards)".
David Buckman