Portrait painter, born in Chingford, Essex, into a comfortably off family. Began reading English at Christ’s College, Cambridge, then was called up in 1941 during World War II, serving as a sub-lieutenant in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, initially in the anti-submarine trawler Arab, then as a lieutenant in Ceylon, Malta and Sicily, where he painted landscape watercolours. Back in England, Skipp caught polio and, while recovering and studying art techniques, was inspired by Philip de Laszlo’s portrait style and dynamic symmetry in Greek vases. After studying under William Coldstream at the Slade School of Fine Art, he learned his favoured egg tempera and oil emulsion technique from Pietro Annigoni, to whom Skipp was introduced by his lifelong friend Beatrice (“B”) Henderson, whose house in Hampshire he eventually inherited.
Text source: 'Artists in Britain Since 1945' by David Buckman (Art Dictionaries Ltd, part of Sansom & Company)
