Jack Crabtree

Jack Crabtree was born in Rochdale, Lancashire, in 1938, the son of Lilian, a cotton mill worker, and Roland Crabtree, a labourer at the gasworks. According to his son, he discovered art almost by accident, when a teacher at Rochdale grammar school for boys encouraged him to try the subject.

A scholarship took him to Rochdale College of Art in 1955, then to Saint Martin's School of Art in London from 1957 to 1959 and to the Royal Academy Schools from 1959 to 1961. A Kenyon's Foundation travelling bursary from Rochdale Education Authority took him to France in 1959 and 1960.

After the Royal Academy Schools, Crabtree taught at Salford School of Art and in schools around Salford and Rochdale from 1961 to 1966. He then lectured at the College of Art in Newport, South Wales, from 1966 to 1974, and was a member of the 56 Group Wales from 1971 to 1975. In 1971 he painted murals on the theme of Owain Glyndwr for the council chambers at Plas Machynlleth.

In 1974 and 1975 he held a fellowship with the National Coal Board and spent a year working underground in the South Wales coalfields, producing 119 sketches and paintings that formed a pictorial record of a changing industry. He held the Gregynog Arts Fellowship of the University of Wales in 1975 and 1976, and in 1977 became the first recipient of the International Ruhr Arts Fellowship, awarded by the West German government, documenting coal and steel in Germany.

From 1984 he was professor and head of fine art at the University of Ulster in Belfast. Over a decade there he painted the city during the Troubles, looking past the bomb damage to the lives of the people who lived there. In 1991 and 1992, as an artist in residence for the National Trust, he recorded Patterson's Spade Mill in Templepatrick before its restoration. His 1990 show at the Kerlin Gallery in Dublin included several dozen studies of the Irish writer Francis Stuart.

He was described as a social realist. Writing in Tribune in 1978, Margaret Richards said his vision was "affectionate rather than romantic." His work is held by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, the Ulster Museum, National Museum Cardiff, the National Library of Wales, the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery and the National Coal Mining Museum for England, among others.

Crabtree married Mary Ellis in 1962 and they had two sons, Tom and Sam. Mary died in the late 1960s. His son described him as uncompromising about his art, and as a reserved man behind a sometimes flamboyant appearance: selective about friendship, kind, funny and stubborn. In 1994 he retired to Nantlle in North Wales, where he converted the loft of his house into a studio and continued to paint as his sight gradually failed.

Jack Crabtree's death at the age of 87 was announced by his son Sam in an obituary published by The Guardian on 13 August 2026. The exact date, place and cause of death were not given in the published reports. Museum Wales said it was saddened to learn of his death and praised work that offered a powerful and compassionate portrait of working-class life. He was survived by his sons, Tom and Sam.

Crabtree left a large body of work recording the coal and steel communities of South Wales and Germany and the people of Belfast during the Troubles. His paintings are held in public collections in Wales, England, Northern Ireland, Ireland and Germany. His son wrote that he left a lasting challenge to look more closely at humanity, and to recognise the importance of lives that might otherwise pass unnoticed.