Roger Hampson

Roger Hampson was an important painter and printmaker of the post WW2 period. He was born in 1925 and grew up in the working class village of Tyldesley, Wigan. Hampson's inspiration stemmed from his childhood and upbringing. He is well known for his paintings, drawings, lino prints and mono prints of the industrial surroundings in which he was brought up with mining scenes, mill scenes and street scenes and pictures of the people that he encountered in these surroundings.

Hampson was motivated to paint a landscape and way of life that he knew was fast disappearing. His paintings capture the bleakness of the northern landscape as well as the warmth and humour of its people. He studied at Manchester College of Art from 1946 - 1952 and followed a career in teaching art becoming the principal at Bolton College of Art & Design from 1978 to 1986 and was elected president of the Manchester Academy of Fine Arts from 1969 to 1976.

His work has been exhibited is many group shows and in 30 solo exhibitions with a selection of about 75 works "Images of a Lost Landscape" toured around North West municipal art galleries starting in Oldham and then on to Wigan.

Work by Roger Hampson has seen an increased level of interest in the market place as an increasing number of North West galleries have decided to include his work in their exhibitions.

He died in 1996 aged 71 after suffering from Leukaemia.

A book on his life and work entitled ROGER HAMPSON - a lost landscape was published in April 2009 to coincide with a retrospective exhibition at Gallery Oldham.