About

 

ALEXANDER CRESWELL – Watercolour Painter

ALEXANDER CRESWELL (born 1957) is an internationally acclaimed artist, best known for the large set of watercolours he painted of Windsor Castle for the Royal Collection depicting the Fire and restoration in 1993 & 1997, published as a book “Out of the Ashes”. Before that, his book “The Silent Houses of Britain” had caught the public imagination and critical attention, and was followed by a series of major exhibitions at Spink & Son, London and Hong Kong, establishing his career within the long tradition of British watercolourists.

His distinctive style in watercolour combines subtle colouring and skilful draughtsmanship with a strong reverence for natural light, and he has consistently fought to bring watercolour to the forefront of academic painting.

Recognition of his work has brought important commissions, not only from Queen Elizabeth II following the Windsor Castle fire, but also to record the Lying in State of the Queen Mother, the creation of the Alnwick Garden for the Duchess of Northumberland, work for the Parliamentary Art Collection, the Frick Museum and the Forbes Collection, New York.

He has travelled as official artist with the Prince of Wales and taught at the Prince of Wales’s Institute of Architecture. He has painted extensively in Sicily, Venice and Turin as well as in Britian, the USA, Europe, Russia and the Middle East. He has exhibited to high critical acclaim in New York and London while also preparing a publishing series on Italian architecture.

For 2005 he created unique large-scale installations for Grange Park Opera in Hampshire, and in 2006 he pioneered a series of spectacularly big watercolours which, at over 3 metres in length, are the largest ever painted. These were shown in New York in October 2006. Subsequently he lived extensively in Venice exploring a hidden side of the city.
In 2008 he held highly successful one-man shows at the Majlis Gallery, Dubai and the Portland Gallery, London.

He is a member of the Advisory Council for the Institute of Classical Architecture & Classical America (ICA&CA)
The Art Workers Guild
The International Network for Traditional Architecture, Building Arts & Urbanism (INTBAU)
Royal Cornwall Yacht Club
Club Vela al Terzo, Venice
Port Navas Yacht Club
Bentley Drivers Club

In 2006 Creswell was invested as a Knight of the Order of Francis I in the Sacred Constantinian Order of St. George.
In 2008 he was awarded the Arthur Ross Award for Excellence in the Classical Tradition.