Back view of Carel Weight painting, ca. 1980s

Olwyn Bowey RA (b. 1936)

RA Collection: Art

The drawing depicts a back view of the artist Carel Weight RA who is standing painting the landscape. Weight was working on a painting of cornfields while staying with his friend, Olwyn Bowey RA, at her cottage in the village of Barlavington in West Sussex. Weight would go out to paint three times a day, in the morning, the afternoon and the evening. Bowey remembers that she made a number of drawings of Weight while he was painting (the whereabouts of these other drawings is unknown).

Bowey was taught by Weight when she was a student in the late 1950s at the Royal College of Art, London. She thinks that she probably gave this drawing to Weight, possibly as a Christmas gift. The work was given to the Royal Academy as part of Weight's bequest.