John McCombs NDD, ROI, RBA, FRSA, MAFA (1943-2025)
Born in Manchester, John McCombs showed an aptitude for drawing from an early age. John’s talent was recognised and encouraged by his father, who bought him high quality art materials, as well as prints of Constable oil paintings which were hung around the home. These inspired the young John to want to paint in oils, but his father told him he would need to master first crayons and then watercolours before he would buy him his first oil colours. John remembered his first oil paints: “the first time I took a cap off a tube and smelled the paint, I knew this was a posh smell!”
John’s promise as an artist was also recognised and encouraged by the art teacher at his junior school, who helped him to gain a place at the High School of Art in Manchester, where he studied from the age of thirteen up to the age of eighteen. From here, John went to London for five years to study at St Martins School of Art, whose teachers at the time included Frederick Gore, then head of painting, and Leon Kossoff. In his final degree, John’s marks in his final degree were the highest achieved at St. Martin’s since the war, and he was offered a teaching post.
It was while still at St. Martin’s, during a holiday back in Manchester, that a chance bus ride with a friend took John to the area that was to inspire him for the rest of his life:
John and a friend decided to have a day out walking. So they went into Manchester city centre to catch a bus out, but couldn’t decide where to go. John suggested that they got on any bus going anywhere, so they caught the next one which came along and didn’t look at its destination. They booked to its terminus and an hour or so later it dropped them off at Uppermill, Saddleworth.
John was immediately impressed by the landscape. It was winter. They started to walk and after some time came to a set of crossroads. John looked at the signpost which read Huddersfield 14 miles, Oldham 4 miles and Delph ¼ mile. So intrigued by the name they decided to investigate. On arriving at the village centre John was impressed by this ancient stone-built village under glorious morning sunshine and surrounded by snow covered hills that he turned to his friend and said. “When I’ve finished at college this is where I’m going to come to live and paint.”
True to his word, John turned down the offer of a job at St Martin’s and settled in Saddleworth, where he began his lifelong project of making a total visual record of Delph and the surrounding landscape in all seasons. In John’s own words:
It is an area of undulating landscape which appeals to my interest in form. I am interested in the nature of landscape; its sense of permanence but seen under a fleeting light. My aim is to make a personal visual record of the village of Delph and the surrounding landscape before the character of the area is spoiled by development. I also like painting the clothed figure and this can include crowd, group or single figure subjects based on the social and working life of the village. Based upon observation my technique is that of using incisive but vigorous brush-line drawing over flatly applied areas of colour. It is an investigative technique where close study of the subject and personal expression become integral. It is as insistent as well as naturally based technique which has been developed to pin down my particular interest in light, form, space and movement whilst retaining life within the point. All is intended to be enveloped within an aesthetic as well as meaningful whole which strives to speak for itself.
On the advice of LS Lowry, whom he met one day in 1970, John started submitting work to the exhibitions of Royal Societies based in London, the better to show his work to a national audience. He was duly elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 1978, a Member of the Royal Institute of Oil Painters in 1982 and a member of the Royal Society of British Artists in 1998.
During his time as a member of the ROI, John served on the Council, and won the Stanley Grimm Award (1990), the Alan Gourley Memorial Award (2001), and the Le Clerc Fowle Medal, for an outstanding group of paintings, in 2007.
Johns work is in private collections all over the world, and in public collections in the north west, including Manchester Art Gallery. He was a founder member of the “New Manchester Group” of artists, and he was listed in “Who’s Who in Art”.
John was elected a Member of the Manchester Academy of Fine Arts (MAFA) in 1975, and in 2009 he was elected President, fulfilling his father’s prediction, made when John was nine.
