Alison Debenham

British painter and artist

Alison Debenham

Born|

Alison Edith Debenham

18 February 1903[1]

Holland Park, London, England[1]

Died| November 24, 1967(1967-11-24) (aged 64)[2]

London, England

Nationality| British
Education| Slade School of Art
Known for| Portraiture
Spouse| René Le Plat (m. 1930)

Alison Edith Debenham (later Le Plat, 18 February 1903 – 24 November 1967) was a British painter and artist.

## Biography

[edit]

Debenham was born in 1903 in London,[1] to Sir Ernest Ridley Debenham, 1st Baronet, and his wife, Lady Cicely, of the Debenhams department store family business.[3] After attending a finishing school in Paris, Alison Debenham studied at the Slade School of Art in London from 1923 to 1926.[4] In 1928 she returned to live in Paris before, in 1929, moving to the south of France where she studied with the French painter Simon Bussy.[4] There she met several prominent artists and authors including André Gide and Henri Matisse and, in 1930, married artist René Le Plat.[3]

Throughout her artistic career, Debenham mostly painted portraits of friends and family members but also created a series of portraits of the workers on her father's estate.[3] She regularly exhibited in both London and Paris and her first solo exhibition was at the Galerie Vignon in Paris in 1932.[4]

In 1935 she had a solo show at the Zwemmer Gallery in London and for a time she was associated with the Euston Road School of artists. A memorial exhibition for Debenham was held at the Richmond Hill Gallery in 1968 and a further retrospective was mounted by the Belgrave Gallery in London in 1976.[3][4]

She died in 1967 in London and was survived by her son, Jean-Luc, and daughter, Clarissa.[2]

## References

[edit]

1. ^ a b c "Births". The Times. The Times Digital Archive. p. 1.
2. ^ a b "Deaths". The Times. The Times Digital Archive. 28 November 1967. p. 1.
3. ^ a b c d David Buckman (2006). Artists in Britain Since 1945 Vol 1, A to L. Art Dictionaries Ltd. ISBN 0-953260-95-X.
4. ^ a b c d Frances Spalding (1990). 20th Century Painters and Sculptors. Antique Collectors' Club. ISBN 1-85149-106-6.

## Further reading

[edit]

* Alison Debenham, introduction by Claude Rogers, The Belgrave Gallery, London, 1976.

## External links

[edit]

10 artworks by or after Alison Debenham at the Art UK site

Authority control databases

International|

* VIAF

Artists|

* ULAN
* RKD Artists