Jim Russell

Unsentimental artist with a quirky, private vision

James Allen Russell, artist: born Walsall, Staffordshire 30 June 1933; married 1959 Becky Cook (one son, one daughter); died London 13 December 2002.

Jim Russell belonged to an unsentimental, idiosyncratic English tradition of artists – which includes the Camden Town Group of Walter Sickert, Harold Gilman and Charles Ginner and, from a more recent period, Carel Weight – who are drawn to the spectacle of ordinary life. Lone cyclists, boxing rings, the gas-holders behind King's Cross Station, the graffiti-covered walls of the back streets of Sheffield, this world, which many find disquieting, had for Russell a haunting sense of romance. His figures are always retreating from, rather than appearing into, these scenes: it is this quirky, private vision of life which gives Russell's work its individuality.

James Allen Russell was born in Walsall in 1933. His father was an architect but he died when Russell was seven. His mother, who was a teacher, found it impossible to cope by herself and she sent her only child to board at the Royal School, Wolverhampton; subsequently he attended Birmingham College of Art.

In 1955 Russell was called up for National Service and spent most of his time in Singapore, where he taught English to Gurkhas in the Army School of Education. He also taught art at the British Council – mostly to rich little Chinese girls who were delivered to classes in their fathers' chauffeur-driven cars. The British Council gave him the opportunity to hold his first one-man exhibitions, and it was in Singapore that he decided that he wanted to paint and draw more than anything. When he returned from the East he had a portfolio full of sketches.

Despite training as a teacher back in England, Russell preferred to work as a freelance illustrator and through his agency, Saxon Artists, he was given contracts to provide drawings for publications such as Punch, Reader's Digest and the Radio Times. Before the coming of television, the Radio Times was for a generation of creative artists such as John Minton, John Nash and Ronald Searle an important outlet; a recent exhibition of the art of the Radio Times at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford featured Russell's work. Another, later commission was for Jackanory on BBC children's television. At the same time, in order to provide an extra income, Russell taught for 10 years on one day a week at St Martin's School of Art in London.

Russell's personal interests included boxing, and his first one-man show in England – at the William Ware Gallery in Fulham Road in 1967 – was attended by Henry Cooper. It sold out completely. The subject continued to fascinate Russell: in 1994 he had an exhibition in Sheffield, "Artists on Canvas", devoted entirely to Herol "Bomber" Graham, the British middleweight champion.

Theatre was another of his passions. David Thacker, the director of the Young Vic, invited Russell to attend rehearsals and make drawings from the first read-through of a play up to opening night. This led to an exhibition, "A Working Theatre – 18 months at the Young Vic", in the foyer of the Lyttelton Theatre of the National Theatre in 1987. He also drew at the Crucible Theatre, Sheffield, the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford, and the Regent's Park Open Air Theatre. Russell's painting Arthur Miller at the Young Vic, done when Miller was in England in the mid-1990s directing a season of his own plays, won a prize from the Garrick Club.

From 1988 to 1992 Russell was artist-in-residence for Thames Television, for whom he made law court drawings – although the work itself had to be done hurriedly, in the corridors outside the court room, since artists are not allowed to draw in court.

Russell was the kindest of men, tolerant and, perhaps because he was so lacking in self-importance, always enthusiastic and eager in his praise of living, fellow artists. He had a passion for poetry and a strong sense of humour.

Although he and his wife lived in Brixton, in south-west London, they kept a caravan near Le Touquet in the Pas de Calais as a second home; it had a shed beside it which Russell used as a studio. He loved northern France with its poplars, canals, roadside crucifixes – which he noticed were never vandalised – and its big, empty skies. Although these French scenes were rural in contrast to his more usual urban landscapes, there were always people in them, whether laden with shopping, appearing unexpectedly over a hedge or, with back turned, cycling out of view (he wondered if he might hold an exhibition dedicated to the bicycle). Together with a love of France came a love of wine, and Russell sat on the committee of the Wine Society for 14 years, overseeing its publications.

It was typical of him that he found expensive art materials inhibiting. Rather than spoil a canvas, he felt more comfortable using a piece of hardboard or MDF which he had found in a skip, painted with ordinary primer from a DIY shop, and then, as the painting progressed, cut down to size. His watercolours he kept in pans, otherwise he was forever losing the tops off the tubes of paint (his favourite colours were green and earth). Then, if a picture failed, he would turn it over and start again.

Despite his own considerable (unwarranted) self-doubt as an artist, Russell was elected to the Royal Society of British Artists in 1995 and to the Royal Watercolour Society in 2001.

Simon Fenwick