About the artist
Hugo Grenville is a renowned British Contemporary Painter whose work stands as a symbol of promise in a world where satire and cynicism predominate. Like the paintings made by Bonnard and Matisse during the Second World War, none of which allude to the grim reality of daily life, his work is grounded in the need to celebrate life, and to express our sense of existence through the recognition of the transforming power of colour and light.
Hugo Grenville first exhibited in London at the Chelsea Arts Society at the age of 15, although it took him another 14 years to become a full time painter. After leaving school he travelled the Hippy Trail to India, ran out of money, joined the Coldstream Guards and served as an officer in Northern Ireland, West Africa, Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) during the Civil War, and finally as an Aide-de-Camp to C-in-C British Army of the Rhine, during which time he painted whenever possible, and studied part-time at Chelsea School of Art and Heatherley’s.
Working first in advertising and then as an art dealer, he finally submitted to the need to paint full-time at the age of 30. Grenville has lectured in institutions such as Falmouth School of Art and the V & A Museum. His fabric designs were included in the Liberty’s Spring/Summer Collection of 2011, and he was short listed for the Threadneedle Prize in 2013. In 2016, Hugo was invited to have a one man show at Studio 2000, Holland.
Since then Hugo has had over 20 one-man exhibitions at major galleries in New York, London and Palm Beach. Hugo has forged an enviable reputation as one of the country’s leading colourist painters. His work was recently included in a retrospective of Impressionist painting at the Nassau Museum of Art, and exhibited alongside work by Cezanne, Renoir and Degas.
During his career he has painted many portraits of leading figures, including the late Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Runcie, and the counter-tenor Michael Chance in the role of Orpheus at the ENO; he was an Official War Artist in Bosnia in 1995, and has been commissioned by a number of institutions including the Worshipful Company of Ironmongers, Edinburgh City Council and The China Club, Hong Kong.

As well as writing regularly for The Artist magazine, Hugo has built a reputation as an inspirational teacher, running short courses and masterclasses in Bristol, Suffolk, Dorset and Portugal.

Recognized today as one of Britain’s leading artists, he has had many solo exhibitions since his first in London in 1974. His work hangs in many public and private collections internationally.

Grenville’s fluid brush strokes marry colour and pattern in a style not unlike Henri Matisse. The figures and the everyday objects that surround them in his paintings express his joy in life, light, and color. Less evident, but equally important, is a feeling of intimacy that recalls Matisse contemporaries, Pierre Bonnard and Edouard Vuillard. It is here that we see Grenville being influenced by the principles of Les Nabis – a group of young post-impressionists, avant-garde Parisian artists of the 1890s who influenced the fine arts at the turn of the century. One of the Les Nabis’ goals was to integrate daily life into their paintings and cover a flat surface with colors assembled in a certain order, as we see Grenville doing with such grace and sensitivity. Layers of feeling peel back to disclose a spiritual intensity. In the artist’s words, “the world around us becomes a poem revealing something about how it feels rather than how it looks.”

Grenville is recognised as one of the UK’s leading colorist painters. His palette is bright and jaunty: lemon yellow, violet, mauve, and pale blue are colors that appear regularly in his paintings. “The sea does not have to be the blue that you saw,” he explains. “It can be pink, or it might be red, or it might be violet. There is this sense that we can use color as a tool for linking the viewer with the emotional experience of being in the landscape.”

Several years ago, Grenville moved from London to the West Country. He paints almost ceaselessly at his vast studio inside a chapel schoolhouse built in 1794. In the Summer months Hugo holds several Masterclasses with his many students who travel from around the world to Dorset to attend.

In addition to teaching, he is a gifted lecturer with extensive knowledge of art history and a writer whose articles on painting appear regularly in The Artist Magazine.

Grenville’s work is an unashamed and joyous celebration of life, a passionate defense of beauty and domestic harmony, steeped in the English Romantic tradition. It stands as a symbol of promise, and to express his sense of existence through the recognition of the transforming power of color and light.

Through the arrangement of shape, line, pattern and colour the world that is conjured is lyrical, dreamlike and at peace with itself. The still life, landscape and figure paintings do not represent an actual moment in time, but are rather the result of a process of reflection, recollection and reinvention, a distillation of human experience. The flowers in the jug, or the nude on the bed belong not to now, but to all time, just as the abstract elements of colour and light are timeless, and connect us to both the past and the future, to the visible world, and to the invisible.

Collections
Work is represented in corporate, institutional and private collections in UK, USA, Canada, France, Hong Kong and Australia, including:
Edinburgh City Council
The Worshipful Company of Ironmongers
The Ministry of Defence
The China Club, Hong Kong
The Tresco Estate
Pembroke Management
The Duke of Devonshire
Searcy’s
Duke’s Hotel St James’s
The Earl of Verulam

One Man Shows
1991 New King’s Road Gallery
1992 The Newbury Museum: Featured Artist of Newbury Festival
1992 Smith’s Gallery, London
1994 Oliver Swann Gallery, London
1995 Oliver Swann Gallery, London
1995 China Club, Hong Kong 1997 Messum’s, London
1999 Messum’s, London
2000 Messum’s, London
2001 Messum’s, London
2002 Messum’s, London
2003 Messum’s, London
2005 Messum’s, London
2006 Findlay Galleries, New York
2007 Josie Eastwood Fine Art, London
2009 Findlay Galleries, Palm Beach
2010 Cricket Fine Art, London
2011 Findlay Galleries, Palm Beach
2013 Findlay Galleries, New York 2016 Findlay Galleries, Palm Beach
2016 Studio 2000, Domburg, Holland
2017 Findlay Galleries, New York
2020 Findlay Galleries, Palm Beach
2021 Findlay Galleries, New York
Group Shows
During the past 25 years Hugo Grenville has exhibited at the Salon (Societe des Artistes Française) in Paris, and at the Threadneedle Prize in London, the New English Art Club, the Royal Society of British Artists, the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolour, the Royal Society of Painters in Oil, The Chelsea Arts Club.
Grenville has recently exhibited alongside pieces by Cezanne, Degas and Renoir in New York at the Nassau Museum of Art, USA