Wilfred Fairclough

Wilfred Fairclough joined the Royal College of Art in 1931, where he excelled as a printmaker, being taught by Robert Sargent Austin, Malcolm Osborne and the visiting professors, Francis Dodd and Henry Rushbury. Wilfred Fairclough was awarded the Prix de Rome for engraving in January 1934 and the resulting stay in Italy made a huge impression on his work. By 1940 he had produced 31 etched works; however, he all but abandoned etching during the first years after the war due to the total lack of demand for prints during this period.

Upon his return to Italy in 1961, Wilfred Fairclough’s interest in etching was inspired afresh and he went on to create over 70 further plates after this date. It is in these later works, that his true individual talent emerged; these are quite distinct from his early works in which his personal style was repressed by the overbearing teaching of R.S. Austin. Upon his retirement from teaching in 1972 Fairclough threw himself back into printmaking with renewed gusto, producing an especially notable series of etchings and aquatints of Venice and Lucerne over the following twenty years.