Peyton Skipwith is a leading authority on British arts, both fine and decorative, of the 1870-1940 period. He retired in 2005 as Deputy Managing Director of The Fine Art Society in New Bond Street, where he had worked for forty-four years. During that time he curated or co-curated many exhibitions covering most aspects of British fine and decorative arts of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Among those were The Arts & Crafts Movement (1973), Jewellery and Jewellery Design 1850-1930 (1976), Sculpture in Britain Between the Wars (1987), Britain Between the Wars (2004), Sixty Paintings by Joseph Southall from the Alan M. Fortunoff Collection (2005).
Since retiring from the Fine Arts Society he has written a number of books, including for ACC Art Book’s design series, in conjunction with Brian Webb – Edward Bawden; Eric Ravilious; Paul & John Nash; John Piper; McKnight Kauffer; Claude Lovat Fraser; Harold Curwen & Oliver Simon -The Heyday of the Curwen Press; Peter Blake and David Gentleman. He and Webb have also co-produced Edward Bawden’s London and Edward Bawden’s Kew Gardens (both published by the Victoria & Albert Museum) and Edward Bawden’s Scrapbooks (Lund Humphries). They are currently working on the scrapbooks of Eric Ravilious. And most recently for the Court Barn Museum in Chipping Campden, they wrote and produced A is for Ashbee: An Arts and Crafts Alphabet.
He has lectured widely in Britain, Australia, and the U.S.A; in 2006 he was co-recipient of the Iris Award (New York) for his contribution to the knowledge of the decorative arts and in 2016 curated an exhibition of twentieth century British painting at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. He is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries (London), a Past Master of the Art Workers’ Guild and past President of the Double Crown Club. His twenty years of correspondence with the renowned British artist Edward Bawden (1903-1989) was published at the end of 2017.
Last modified 20 August 2020