Arthur Armstrong

Who was Arthur Armstrong?

Arthur Armstrong was a painter from Carrickfergus, County Antrim, Northern Ireland, who often worked in a Cubist style and produced landscape and still-life works.

Armstrong was born in Carrickfergus on 12 January 1924. He was the son of a house painter and attended Strandtown Primary School. Later he studied architecture at Queen's University Belfast, but after two years he moved to study art at Belfast College of Art. The influence of Cubism and the School of Paris can be clearly seen in his work, which took him to England, France and Spain. He also travelled and painted in the West of Ireland and Connemara inspired some of his best work. In 1950 his work was exhibited in the Grafton Gallery in Dublin, and subsequent exhibitions took place in England, Spain and the United States, as well as in Belfast and Dublin. In 1957 he was awarded a travelling scholarship from the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts and went to Spain. He eventually settled in Dublin in 1962 and began showing work at the Royal Hibernian Academy.

In 1968 he was awarded the Douglas Hyde Gold Medal at the Oireachtas Exhibition.