Carel Weight (1908-1997) was born in Paddington, West London. Weight was a painter of thematically complex and highly imaginative landscapes and portraits. Much of his work has a strong undercurrent of the sinister and the supernatural.

Weight studied at the Hammersmith School of Art in 1928-30, where he met lifelong friend Ruskin Spear RA, and at Goldsmiths’ College in 1931-3. After WWII, Weight taught at the Royal College of Art, later becoming Professor of Painting.

Weight’s paintings often depict suburban settings in which unexpected human dramas occur, some humorous, many frightening. The locations of the pictures were usually real places, but the figures were imagined and “grew under the brush”.

In 1949, Weight joined The London Group of artists. He was elected a Royal Academician in 1965 and awarded a CBE in 1962. The Royal Academy held a retrospective exhibition for the artist in 1982. Weight’s work is held in prestigious collections, including the Tate Gallery, the Victoria & Albert Museum, and the Imperial War Museum, and was collected by the late David Bowie.