Norman Lloyd was born on 16 October 1895 near Newcastle, NSW, where he also attended primary school. Leaving school in 1911, Lloyd started to work and study painting with Julian Ashton and James R Jackson in Sydney.
On his 21st birthday in 1916 Lloyd enlisted with the Australian Imperial Forces and was transported to Europe where he was seriously wounded in battle a year later. Returning to Sydney in February 1918, he re-commenced painting lessons at the Julian Ashton Art School. From 1921 to 1926, Lloyd exhibited with galleries in Sydney and Melbourne, showing landscapes and Sydney harbour scenes painted in the more traditional style of his teachers.
From 1926 to 1929 Lloyd visited Europe and travelled widely in Italy and France, exhibiting in the UK, France and Australia, culminating in a solo exhibition at Macquarie Galleries in Sydney.
In the 1930s, Lloyd emigrated permanently to London with his wife Edith, setting up a boarding house in upmarket St Johns Wood and establishing himself quickly in the new society as a kind, generous and interested man with a broad horizon. His mansion became a meeting point and home for many Australian expatriates, among them painters Will Ashton , Alison Rehfisch and George Duncan . The Lloyds hosted pianist Nancy Weir, and war correspondent Harold Fyffe was a close friend who introduced Lloyd to H.G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw.
Lloyd also established himself professionally when he was elected member of the exclusive Royal Institute of Oil Painters (ROI) in 1936 and of the London Sketch Club, over which he presided during 1941 to 1942.
He also kept his connection with Australia by becoming a Fellow of the Royal Art Society of New South Wales, and in 1949 Henry Hanke’s portrait of Norman Lloyd was chosen to be hung in the Archibald Prize of the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
From 1933 until 1970, Lloyd exhibited regularly with the ROI, and showed at the Royal Academy of London. The titles of his work testify of Lloyd’s love for mediterranean Europe – Italy, Spain, France, Turkey and Morocco – which inspired joyful land, sea and mountainscapes in a style that evoked impressionism. Lloyd was a prolific painter who was able to paint fast, preferring textural oil and pastels.
From 1947 onwards, Lloyd spent the summers with Zénaide Chaumette – whom he had met in Paris after the war – in the heart of France in Chassignolles. This liaison strengthened his connection with France and probably led to his exhibiting at several Salons of the Société des Artistes Français from 1947 until 1962, and also at the Salon d’Hiver in Paris.
After the death of Zénaide Chaumette in 1954, Lloyd was willed Chaumette’s house in Chassignolles until he died, and it seems that he moved to Chassignolles permanently in 1974, at the age of 80. It appears that he later returned to London to live and he died there on 5 March 1983. The Times of London printed a short obituary.
In 1989 and 1990, Lloyd’s work was shown at Savill Galleries in Sydney alongside a number of important Australian artists. In 1990 Christopher Day Gallery, Sydney, dedicated a solo exhibition to Norman Lloyd, and 1991 saw his work hung again in a group exhibition in Deutscher Fine Art, Melbourne.
Lloyd’s work is now represented in the Art Gallery of Western Australia, the Queensland Art Gallery, the University of Sydney Art Collection and numerous private collections in Australia, Europe and the United States of America.
- Writers:
- Banziger, Brigitte
- Date written:
- 2008
- Last updated:
- 2011
