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David Remfry

British artist (born 1942)

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 18, 2026
Entity authorityQ5238981
Source-derived summary

David Remfry (born 1942 in Worthing, England) is a British painter and curator. He served as the Eranda Professor of Drawing at the Royal Academy Schools from 2016 to 2018 and as a competition judge for the Royal Academy of Arts Charles Wollaston Award in 2021. In 2023 he coordinated the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition. A retrospective of Remfry’s work, curated by Dr Gerardine Mulcahy-Parker, is planned for 2025 at Beverley Art Gallery, East Riding.

Career

Remfry moved to Hull aged five and attended Hull College of Art from 1959 to 1964 before moving to London. His first solo show was in London at the Grafton Gallery in 1973 and in the United States at the Ankrum Gallery, Los Angeles in 1980. He has exhibited since then at galleries in London, Holland, New York, Los Angeles and Florida. In 2002 Alanna Heiss curated a show of his work at MoMA PS1, New York. Other exhibitions include the Boca Raton Museum of Art, 1999 and 2002 Butler Institute of American Art, 2003, Ohio, and the Museum of Art - DeLand, 2017 Orlando.

Solo museum shows in the UK include the Usher Gallery, Lincoln (2023), Rugby Art Gallery and Museum, Rugby (2023), the inaugural exhibition at the new Royal Watercolour Society Gallery in Whitcomb Street, London (2022), The Lightbox, Woking (2020-21), Pallant House Gallery, Chichester (2015), the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (2005), Ferens Art Gallery, Hull, (1975 and 2005), Middlesbrough Art Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery (1992) and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (2003).

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “David Remfry” is british artist (born 1942). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through David, Remfry and British, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1942, 2016, 2018, 2021—that can be checked directly. The authority record carries competing date values—1942-01-01, 1942-07—which should remain separate until their references and qualifiers are resolved. For this dossier, David, Remfry and British is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “british artist (born 1942)” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5238981. VIAF identifies the subject as 95728852. The Library of Congress control number is no2003080549. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1942, 2016, 2018 and 2021.

Critical limits

A concise life account rarely captures disputed attribution, private networks or the changing language used to describe a career. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “David Remfry”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow David Remfry primary sources, David Remfry archive and David research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “David Remfry”?
  2. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
  3. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from David Remfry” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.