James Lloyd (artist)

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James Lloyd (born Frederick James Lloyd, October 12, 1905, in Alsager, Cheshire, England) was an artist. He became famous for his paintings, mostly of animals and country landscapes.

He was the son of a policeman who had taken up farming. He had worked on his fathers farm until the age of 19, when he too joined the police force. He had a variety of jobs before the war: gas-works stoker; bus conductor; buliders labourer; lamp-lighter; until joining the Coldstream Guards. On demobilisation he married a young wife and settled as a farm worker - a wagonner- in Shropshire. He and four children bought a small holdings at Triangle, near Halifax, in the Pennines. Although he had done some paintings as a young man, it was not until he was forty, that he began to paint in earnest.

He and his family moved to Skirpenbeck, Yorkshire in the mid 1950's. He got a job at the Derwent Plastics factory at Stamford Bridge, where he did shift work so he could paint by day and work by night. There were now so many paintings, labouriously constructed dot by dot (pointillism). His wife, Nancy Lloyd, wrote to Sir Herbert Read and paid James a visit to see his paintings, and infact bought a couple of them. Herbert Read sent some to various galleries in London.

In 1958 James held his first one-man show at (the late) Arthur Jeffress Gallery in London. All but 2 of the 32 paintings being held were sold. By then the family (eight children, and one who died young) had moved further into the village of Skirpenbeck to a council house. He never painted in a studio; he would usually just paint in the living room with the children playing around him.

By the early 1960s he had stopped working at the Derwent Plastics factory to paint full time. In 1961 he was commissioned by the York City Art Gallery under the Evelyn Award Scheme to paint the view of Cliffords Tower, York for the gallerys collection - his first work in a public collection. L.S. Lowry also produced a painting of Cliffords Tower. At the closure of Arthur Jeffress Gallery, James Lloyd was taken on by the Portal Gallery, where his paintings still remain. His first one man show there was in 1964 followed by others in 1966, 1968 and 1971. He never titled or dated his paintings. In 1963 Eric Lister of the Portal Gallery introduced James to film director Ken Russell. The result was that the BBC Monitor unit made a television documentary film about his life and work, 'The dotty world of James Lloyd'. Two years later James was chosen to play (with no previous acting experience) the part of Henri Rousseau in Ken Russells 'Monitor' film on the great French naive painter.