Mother

Black and red chalk drawing, portrait of artist Mother.

Born in Leeds to Polish-Jewish immigrant parents Barnet Naviasky (born Berel Neviazhsky) and Fanny (née Levinson), he won a scholarship to the Leeds School of Fine Arts in 1907. Philip was then admitted as a student of painting at Royal Academy Schools at 18, said to have been the youngest ever. He also gained a Royal Exhibition award from Board of Education for three years at Royal College of Art. Naviasky was a fluent artist who worked widely in Yorkshire as well as abroad in Spain, the south of France, Morocco and elsewhere. Among his portraits were Lord Nuffield the industrialist, the politicians Ramsay Macdonald and Philip Snowden and many Dales characters. Showed at RA, RP, RSA and had a series of solo shows. In the late-1960s had to stop painting because of failing sight. Galleries in Leeds, Newcastle, Preston and Stoke-on-Trent hold his work.