| AdminHistory | William Townsend (1909-1973). In 1968 he was appointed an individual chair as Professor at the Slade with responsibility to develop a Postgraduate Fine Art course.
Townsend was a landscape painter best known for his English and Canadian landscape paintings who studied at the Slade from 1926-1930. He became involved in anti-fascist protests and politics later in the 1930s but declined an invitation to stand as a parliamentary candidate for the Labour Party. He saw active service during WWII enlisting as an Officer in the Royal Artillery before transferring to the Army Education Corps. He was appointed as a lecturer at the Slade in 1949, later becoming a Reader in Fine Art before being appointed Professor. In 1962 he was invited to the Banff School of Fine Arts in Alberta, Canada where he was later appointed visiting Professor and then Head of Painting. |