Paul D’aguilar
Artist known for the dynamic quality of his work and for restoring Old Masters in Florence and Venice
PAUL D’AGUILAR, who has died aged 94, was a painter of landscapes, animals, figures and townscapes in oils and watercolours and a highly skilled art restorer. His use of rapid brushstrokes and texture gave a dynamic quality to his work and he achieved considerable recognition for his ability to capture the movement of figures – children at play, men at work in fields and vineyards, footballers at their game.
His paintings were full of dramatic colour and his object was always to evoke the impact and freshness of seeing something for the first time. He wrote and illustrated a book entitled Drawing Nudes (1965), won several prizes for drawing and had solo exhibitions in London galleries and on the continent. Examples of D’aguilar’s work are held in several municipal and in many private collections.
After Florence and Venice were devastated by floods in 1966, D’aguilar, who had studied painting conservation at the Courtauld Institute, travelled to Italy and spent several years working on paintings in the Uffizi in Florence, including Bronzino’s Descent of Christ into Limbo and panels by Verrochio, Vasari and Ghirlandaio. In Venice he restored several paintings by Tintoretto, including the massive Vision of Christ to St Peter, which hangs behind the altar in the Madonna dell’orto. He also worked on restoring paintings and sculptures in the Ca’ d’oro.
Back in England he took part in the conservation of works by such artists as Holbein and Piero della Francesca, restored an icon from Southwark Cathedral, and did much restoration work for private clients, including on paintings by Corot, Hogarth, Poussin and Jan Steen.
Paul D’aguilar was born on September 9 1924, the second son of Baron Kurt von Neuhoff, a businessman from Wuppertal, Germany, and his Spanish wife, Inez D’aguilar. His older brother Michael, who died in 2016, was also a well-known artist.
Their parents’ marriage broke up when Paul was two, and as the boys told the story, their father was awarded custody of Michael while their mother was given custody of Paul. Visiting the ancestral Schloss to hand Michael over, however, she could not go through with it and decamped with the boys to London. They settled in Kensington, his mother marrying Captain Howard Brokenshaw, a South African engineer and former First World War pilot who adopted the two boys, although they used their mother’s maiden name.
The brothers were educated privately at home, first by Irish governesses and then by tutors, mostly Cambridge students who had been sent down for some misdemeanour or other. Two of these, Eric O’dea and the painter Professor Oscar Barblan from Siena, encouraged the boys’ artistic talents and their interest in music, particularly opera. Visits to Covent Garden were so regular that both boys knew the lyrics of Verdi and Puccini by heart.
After the war, Michael and Paul entered the Royal Academy, where Paul studied under Henry Rushbury and was awarded the bronze, silver and gold medals for drawing. He won first prize from the Royal Drawing Society and was awarded a Leverhulme scholarship, using his prize money to finance his travels abroad and paint around the Greek islands and in Spain, Italy and France.
After the Royal Academy he spent two years at the Courtauld Institute studying picture conservation so that he could earn a living while being able to create his own paintings as he wished without concessions to passing fashion. It was his tutor, Professor Rees Jones, who recommended him for restoration work in Italy.
An erudite man, described by friends as a “walking encyclopaedia”, D’aguilar was also a talented pianist. Cautious, considered and careful in all that he did, he was notably frugal in his private life. Socks would be darned, elbows patched, worn-down pencils would be sharpened at both ends and used pieces of clingfilm would be washed and hung to dry around the kitchen ready for re-use.
He was unmarried.
Paul D’aguilar, born September 9 1924, died October 8 2018