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Painter, draughtsman and teacher, born in humble circumstances in Wigan, Lancashire, settling near there from 1950 with his painter wife Kathleen at Appley Bridge. Major’s first job in a tailor’s shop undermined his always precarious health and he was made unemployed. He attended the local Art School, 1927–32, and taught there part-time and at adult education classes, while insisting that he was self-taught. Major was a fervent Lancastrian, against materialism, the commercial gallery system and the sale of his pictures to rich collectors. He retained about 3,000 of his pictures, which he said were painted for ordinary people, not money, and he lived in straitened circumstances. Art critic John Berger called Major’s pictures “among the best English paintings of our time”.

Text source: 'Artists in Britain Since 1945' by David Buckman (Art Dictionaries Ltd, part of Sansom & Company)


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