Rodrigo Moynihan was born in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain to an Irish father and a Spanish mother in 1910, moving to England with his family in 1918. He attended the Slade School of Fine Art and although he briefly experimented with abstraction, he later became closely associated with the Euston Road School which reacted against the avant-garde. He is best known for his portraits of British notables, among them Princess Elizabeth and Prime Minister Clement Attlee.
Painter Rodrigo Moynihan was born on 17 October 1910 in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain, to an Irish father, Herbert James Moynihan, a fruit broker, and a Spanish mother, Maria de la Puerta. The family moved to England in 1918 but travelled extensively over the following years, including to the USA, where Moynihan attended high school (Madison, New Jersey, 1924–27), and Rome, Italy (1927–28). Moynihan's family returned to England in the late 1920s and he enrolled at the Slade School of Fine Art (1928–31), studying under Henry Tonks. In 1934 Moynihan's name came to public attention when he took part in the seminal Objective Abstractions exhibition at the Zwemmer Gallery (run by émigré, Anton Zwemmer) in London, showing a number of non-representational paintings consisting of loose, visible brushstrokes, alongside works by Geoffrey Tibble, Graham Bell and others.
In the interview published in the exhibition catalogue, Moynihan stated that his paintings '[...]have more in common with the impressionist technique whereby painting identifies itself with and derives from, its means, than with a system in which the artist imposes upon the canvas a preconceived idea' ( Objective Abstraction, Tate website). After 1937 Moynihan abandoned non-representational painting and became closely associated with the Euston Road School, through his friendship with William Coldstream, Victor Pasmore, Tibble and Bell, which reacted against avant-garde styles and asserted the importance of painting traditional subjects in a realist manner. In 1940 he held his first solo exhibition at the Redfern Gallery. The Observer described him as ‘one of the most interesting of the young Euston Road group’ and praised his ‘virtuosity in pigment’, adding that ‘He has caught an authentic French accent in the charming portrait Elinor’ (Gordon 1940, p. 13).
Following the outbreak of the Second World War, Moynihan enlisted in 1940. He trained as a gunner, joined the camouflage section and served in the Royal Artillery but was invalided out two years later, after which he became an official war artist (1943–44), painting a number of military portraits for the War Artists Advisory Committee. One of Moynihan's best-known works from this period is Medical Inspection (1943, Imperial War Museum), to which critic Julian Freeman, in his review of the 1998 exhibition of Moynihan's wartime works at the IWM, referred to as '[...] one of warfare's outstanding and most deeply felt figure compositions [...] directed at the sluggish, dehumanising processes of army life, their open-ended drudgery and ennui' (Freeman 1998). In 1944 Moynihan became Associate Member of the Royal Academy. During this time he executed several portraits of esteemed individuals, including, among others, the young Princess Elizabeth (1946), and Prime Minister Clement Attlee (1947).
After the war Moynihan became Professor of Painting at the Royal College of Art (1948–57), as documented in his painting Portrait Group 1951 (Tate Collection), which, along with Moynihan himself (shown at far right holding a palette), features his RCA colleagues: John Minton, Colin Hayes, Carel Weight, Rodney Burn, Robert Buhler, Charles Mahoney, Kenneth Rowntree and Ruskin Spear. The same year Moynihan published a book entitled Goya, dedicated to the life and work of the celebrated Spanish artist. In 1953 he was appointed CBE and in 1954 became a full Royal Academician. In 1957, however, he broke away from all existing commitments, resigning from the Royal College and the Royal Academy. During this period he partially returned to abstraction and travelled extensively to France, Canada and the USA, where he co-edited the prestigious academic journal Art and Literature in 1964–68 with Sonia Orwell and John Ashbery. During the 1970s Moynihan returned to figurative painting once again, taking as one of his preferred subjects the contents of his studio (e.g. The Shelf: Objects and Shadows – The Front View, 1982–83, Tate Collection), as well as executing numerous portraits of friends and official commissions. Some renowned sitters from this period include Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and actress Dame Peggy Ashcroft, both in the National Portrait Gallery collection. A retrospective of Moynihan's work was held at the Royal Academy of Arts in 1978, a year after which he was re-elected RA. He received an honorary fellowship from University College, London, in 1970. Rodrigo Moynihan died in South Kensington studio in London, England on 6 November 1990. His works are in numerous UK public collections, including the Ashmolean Museum, Arts Council Collection, Government Art Collection, National Portrait gallery and Tate. In 2002 John Moynihan, Moynihan's son from his first marriage to painter Elinor Bellingham Smith, published a book of memoirs entitled Restless Lives: The Bohemian World of Rodrigo and Elinor Moynihan. In 2013 his painting Objective Abstraction featured in Ben Uri's show marking the centenary of The London Group: 'Uproar!': The First 50 Years of The London Group 1913-1963.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Rodrigo Moynihan]
Publications related to [Rodrigo Moynihan] in the Ben Uri Library