Diana Armfield, RA, RWA, MSIA

British b.1920

Diana Armfield (born 11 June 1920), was born in Ringwood, Hampshire and attended Bedales School, a co-educational independent school in the village of Steep in Hampshire. Armfield married the artist Bernard Dunstan in 1949, and her uncle was the English artist illustrator and writer Maxwell Armfield. She is known for landscapes, and has also painted portraits, literary subjects and still lifes. She has a particular interest in flower paintings, and is considered to owe much to the Sickert tradition.

Armfield studied at the Slade School of Fine Art and the Central School of Art and Crafts, and from 1959 she taught at the Byam Shaw School of Art. She worked as a fabric and wallpaper designer until 1965. In 1985 she was appointed artist-in-residence in Perth, Australia. Following this appointment she was selected as artist-in-residence in Jackson, Wyoming. She became a member of the Royal Academy in 1991.

Armfield has exhibited in London, and is particularly associated with the Browse & Darby Gallery. She has showed in solo exhibitions at Tegfryn Art Gallery, Anglesey in 1975 and 1978. In 1988, she was featured in a combined retrospective with Bernard Dunstan at the Oriel 31 Gallery in Newtown and Welshpool.

Armfield’s work includes commissions from The National Trust in 1988 and HRH The Prince of Wales in 1989. Her work is held by The British Museum, Contemporary Art Society for Wales and the Government Picture Collection. The Victoria and Albert Museum holds examples of her textile work. For several years Armfield ran the Armfield-Passano Partnership with Roy Passano, both of which contributed to the 1951 Festival of Britain.

She is a member of the New English Art Club, Royal West of England Academy and the Royal Cambrian Academy of Art, and was elected as a Royal Academician in 1991.

Armfield has worked as a painter, designer and teacher, and as of 2006, she lives in London and Wales.