James Rushton RWS NEAC ARCA passed away in May 2025. Elected to the NEAC in 1995, he was a painter of finely observed watercolours and oils, admired for the sensitivity, subtlety and poetic imagination that defined his work.
Below is a 'small memorial to a very gifted artist' by Maurice Sheppard, followed by a short tribute from Francis Bowyer.
"Looking back across the years that James Rushton exhibited with the New English Art Club, the Royal Watercolour Society, and the Royal Academy, you see a flawless series of discreet images. Knowing his personal history would immediately lead us to mould our language when we are considering his work.
"His long training at the Burslem School of Art and the Royal College of Art led him to training as a potter – or is that ceramicist? – in the Porcelain Studios of Bullers Ltd., Wilton. He was also a teacher, indeed a Senior Lecturer, eventually at the North Staffordshire Polytechnic, but remained a consultant designer for the pottery industry.
"From 1976 he worked at his painting. He was 60 years of age when elected an Associate of the Royal Watercolour Society. However, along with the New English Art Club, both groups were to benefit from 37 years of his mature creativity.
Hen Cloud, 18"x22", NEAC Annual 2018
"Unassuming and modest in manner, he looked as if he might have been a civil servant, nearly always wearing a suit and having polished manners. Perhaps I read too much of the manner of his paintings into the man. He always spoke quietly and clearly – ever the professional.
"You needed to look for his work in large mixed exhibitions. When you found them, they had a restrained, even secretive magic about them. His figures and portrait faces were suffused with a ‘brushed’ quality which muted both tone and gradations of colour. There could be bold notes of colour too, particularly in his landscapes, but a lifetime of scrupulous design governed all. Portraits like Paddy (2007) or Maggie (2008) have that ‘ghostly’ feeling of people recalled from memory.
Left: Paddy, 7"x15", NEAC Annual 2007; Right: Maggie, 21"x25", NEAC Annual 2008
"In his landscapes, the figure can be drastically reduced to a symbol. In the superb Hanchurch Woods – Autumn (2012), a woman in an off-white coat has a spot of orange/red as a hat. Here, the figure is rooted to the forward edge of his design. The woods rising up behind her are broad shapes of autumn colour. The design and colour could have come straight out of American painting as we see in Milton Avery and others.
Hanchurch Woods Autumn, NEAC Annual 2012
"Exceptional is his 2015 oil painting called Bus Stop (20 x 24 inches). The composition is bisected by the fall of the light. The streetlight silver of the foreground is set against a blue and charcoal background. The bus shelter, a telling figure, a lamppost, and fence posts articulate the landscape space like a ‘stage set’ for a modern opera. Rushton has truly made a piece of visual magic – at once an ‘abstracted’ ideal, at once a ‘dream’, at once ‘a scary place!’
Bus Stop, 20"x24", NEAC Annual 2015
"In a group exhibition of NEAC members at the Russell Gallery in Putney, he showed another fine landscape – fence posts predominate in a vast, simplified landscape of downland – possibly Salisbury Plain.
Downland / Salisbury Plain, Russell Gallery 2012 exhibition. Image: thanks to Sarah & Charles Russell
"The colours are green, white and blue – all bounded by a drawn line of a brighter, stronger blue. It is so simple and so appealing. Such qualities were also to be seen in Gribun, Isle of Mull (2013).
Gribun, Isle of Mull, 25"x30", NEAC Annual 2013
"We will all miss his quiet ways, the distinction and quality of his drawing, his fine choice of modulated colour, and his special ability of pure design."
Maurice Sheppard PPRWS HRNEAC MA(RCA)
Warslow – In Snow, 14"x19", NEAC Annual 2016
"Although I didn’t know Jim well, other than chatting at exhibitions, I always thought that his pictures reflected the man. They had a lovely poetic feel – sensitive, subtle, and imaginative. His pictures were always ones that I would look out for in New English Art Club and Royal Watercolour Society exhibitions. Jim was a contemporary of my father, William. They had both been involved in art education, hailed from North Staffordshire, which naturally bonded them when they met, and had a mutual respect for each other's work."
Francis Bowyer NEAC PPRWS
For further information and images of his paintings, see James Rushton's NEAC artist profile page.
