Michael Andrews valuation

Michael Andrews (1928–1995) was born in Norwich, and in his last year at school took Saturday classes in oil painting at the Norwich School of Art. After national service, much of it in Egypt, he studied at the Slade School of Fine Art from 1949 to 1953 under William Coldstream, Lucian Freud and Lawrence Gowing, with Euan Uglow and Craigie Aitchison among his fellow students, and a Rome Scholarship in Painting then took him to the British School at Rome. From 1958 he taught at the Slade and at Chelsea School of Art, and in 1959 the Tate acquired his painting A Man Who Suddenly Fell Over. He was a notoriously slow and painstaking painter and made relatively few works: paintings of parties in the 1960s, then the Lights series of views from the air, and later scenes of Scotland and London. He is often associated with the School of London, a circle of figurative painters that included Francis Bacon, Frank Auerbach, Lucian Freud, R. B. Kitaj and Leon Kossoff. The Arts Council held a major exhibition of his work in 1981, and Tate Britain another in 2001.

His output was small, mostly paintings, with drawings and studies for them. A buyer will want the title and date, the exhibition history and any labels on the back. Check a canvas for scuffs, cracking and retouching, and keep any gallery invoice with the work.