Tom Carr was born in Belfast and studied at the Slade School of Art in London in 1929, under Henry Tonks and Wilson Steer. After some time spent in Italy, he returned to London where he exhibited in various galleries over several years, and in 1933 took part in a group exhibition where the artists declared themselves to be ‘Objective Abstractionists’. Afterwards he felt that abstraction didn’t hold his interest, and he returned to figure painting, of children playing, beach scenes or lands
capes of County Down.
In 1939 he returned to Northern Ireland and worked as an official war artist. He taught art at the Belfast College of Art and also had regular shows at the Tom Caldwell Gallery in Belfast. In the 1980s two major retrospectives of Carr’s work were held, one at the Ulster Museum (1983) and one at the RHA (1989). He was honoured with an MBE in 1974 for services to art in Ulster and became OBE in 1993. He was also a member of the Royal Society of Watercolour Painters, the Watercolour Society of Ireland and of the Royal Ulster Academy of Arts.
Tom Carr featured in 'Ulster Artists Exhibition' (2010). Please click here for a link to the catalogue.
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