Artist, designer and teacher, full name John Kenneth Green, who spent most of his childhood in Suffolk and who was a friend and pupil of the local landscape artist Harry Becker, who left Green some of his works. Green was educated at Christ’s Hospital and studied at Slade School of Fine Art, 1922–4, with a Slade Scholarship in 1923, teachers including Henry Tonks. Green’s early work was in the Tonks tradition, although latterly he painted abstracts. As a student he was commissioned to paint a portrait at Cambridge University, which led to others including composer Benjamin Britten, poet Cecil Day Lewis and actress Sybil Thorndike. Green travelled widely, capturing the atmosphere of places such as Cairo, Russia, the islands of the Aegean and the Dordogne.
After a first solo show at Arlington Galleries, 1928, Green visited America in the early 1930s, exhibiting at the Ferargil Galleries, New York, 1934.
Worked at Glyndebourne Opera, 1935–8, having a show of work done there at Storran Gallery, 1937. Was director of art at Wellington College, 1938–45, while there designing scenery and costumes for the Sadler’s Wells productions of Mozart’s Cosi Fan Tutte, 1944, and Britten’s Peter Grimes, 1945 (Green appears in books on Britten and his compositions). Later opera designs were made for the Holland Festival and Finnish Opera, Helsinki. As well as regularly exhibiting at the RA Summer Exhibition, 1925–57, as a member with the NS, 1946–62, and showing with NEAC, RP and RBA, Green held shows in Helsinki, Cairo and Geneva and there was a retrospective at Kettle’s Yard Gallery, Cambridge, 1972. He was a Chelsea Arts Club member. Green’s pictures were in the collections of the Contemporary Art Society; public galleries in Birmingham, Bradford and Leeds; and the National Portrait Gallery holds his 1943 double portrait of Britten and singer Peter Pears.
Text source: 'Artists in Britain Since 1945' by David Buckman
