ARMFIELD, Maxwell Ashby

Maxwell Ashby Armfield (1881 – 1972) was an English artist, illustrator and writer. In 1887 he was admitted to the Birmingham School of Art, then under the headmastership of Edward R. Taylor and considered a major centre of the Arts and Crafts Movement. There he studied under Henry Payne and Arthur Gaskin and, outside of the school, received instruction in tempera painting from Joseph Southall at Southall’s studio in Edgbaston. Leaving Birmingham in 1902, Armfield moved to Paris to study at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière under Gustave Courtois and René Menard, where he became an associate of Gaston Lachaise, Keith Henderson, and Norman Wilkinson. He exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1904, where his painting Faustine was bought by the French State and donated to the Musée du Luxembourg, and is now in the Musée d’Orsay, Paris. Armfield has paintings in the collection of several British institutions including Derby Art Gallery, Southampton and Nottingham Gallery and the Russell-Cotes Art Gallery.