Anthony Christian

In 1957 the newspapers announced Anthony Christian (known at the time as Howard Clanford) as a Child Prodigy since, having started at only ten years of age, he was studying art at The National Gallery, making him the youngest person ever to have permission to copy there. This honour is normally reserved for professional artists and students, but certainly never to anyone under the age of eighteen, making Christian's position unique even to this day. For the press that was a story in itself, but the thing that really grabbed their attention was the subject that Christian had chosen to copy and the sheer quality of the painting he was producing.

The painting he was copying was Philip Wouwermans' 'A Cavalry Battle', an extremely large and complicated painting measuring 6 feet by 4 feet 6 inches. So daunting was this painting that no other artist has ever attempted to reproduce it, but at only 10 years of age Anthony Christian was doing exactly that. It took him over six years to complete and during that time he had received offers up to £25,000 (in 1957) By the early sixties he was making a name for himself as a portrait painter, receiving commissions from the world's rich and famous, which senht him travelling all over the world from New York to Nepal. Come the eighties he had become very well known for his preservation of the Renaissance techniques; Society Magazine referred to him as "the World's fore-most Renaissance-style painter". But commissions never pleased him as his clients rarely wanted an image of themselves as his eye saw them, but rather an idealized version themselves. Christian wanted to become a Master of his own unique style that honoured the techniques of the Old Masters, and he realised that he could not achieve this through endless commissions.

So he left the mainstream market and sought refuge in Asia, and thus Anthony Christian disappeared from the Western World. He continued to paint in Asia, in fact by being free to his own style and inspiration he became extremely prolific. He experimented with technique and genre creating very inspired works. In 1988 he settled in Bali where he established his first gallery which was extremely popular with clients across Asia.

In 1994 he moved to India and found great inspiration in the country's landscape and culture, and later established the Ichor Foundation which has now expanded into India's center for bio-dynamic farming.

He has recently moved back to the United Kingdom and lives in Yorkshire with his wife