Nigel Hughes exhibition
Nigel Hughes (1940-2021)
Nigel Hughes was born in Surrey in 1940. He became a full-time artist after he attended the Royal Academy Schools in London as a guest student between 1977 and 1981 under Peter Greenham and Norman Blamey, having previously been the National Trust's land agent in Northern Ireland.
Starting in 1982, he made a series of 40 large watercolours of Maya monuments in Mexico, Guatemala, Belize and Honduras, the product of 4 field trips. These were exhibited at the National Art Club, New York, the Museo Nacional de Antropología in Mexico and Canning House in London. They were published as a book, with essays, by the Antique Collectors’ Club.
On the same journeys, he began the life-size oil paintings of the Cracidae bird family, 50 species scattered between Mexico and Uruguay. The paintings were shown at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, Missouri Botanic Garden and Houston Museum of Natural Science in Texas, also the Fine Art Society in London. Life-size oil paintings of the 7 species of New World vulture followed, begun in 2013. They were exhibited at Oxford University Museum of Natural History in 2015.
His pictures have been used widely for illustration, much of it through Bridgeman Images. He has written four books, Maya Monuments [Antique Collectors’ Club 2000], Curassows, Guans & Chachalacas [Fine Art Society 2006], New World Vultures [monograph 2015], Sunshine & Good Humour [2017]. He has also written reviews and articles, including for Country Life.
Between these activities, he painted still lifes, animal and bird studies, and landscapes, some commissioned but mostly of his own choosing. There are also sculptures, mainly commissions.
See this exhibition in the Castle Espie gallery.
