William Gear (Scottish, 1915-1997), "Landscape Study", signed and dated '59, titled on verso, oil on canvas, 45 x 34.5cm, 17.75 x 13.5in.

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* Studied painting at Edinburgh College of Art, 1932-7 and the Edinburgh University Fine Art Class 1936-7, his teachers including William Gillies and John Maxwell. After study in Paris with Fernand Leger in 1937 he travelled in Italy and the Balkans area on the strength of a scholarship. He was appointed head of the faculty of fine art in Birmingham College of Art in 1964; guest lecturer at National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne and University of Western Australia, Perth, in 1966; and in 1975 won the Lorne Fellowship and retired as head of the department of fine art at Birmingham Polytechnic. Gear made a significant contribution to European painting through his association with the COBRA group in the immediate post-war years. Fifty year retrospective at the Redfern Gallery, 1997 with another there in 2003. William Gear and COBRA toured from Aberdeen Art Gallery, 1997-98. Tate Gallery and many provincial and foreign collections hold Gear's work.