Eric Newton

Marple Bridge, Manchester, England, 1893 - 1965

About MeEric Oppenheimer was an art critic and book author, who wrote for the Times the Guardian. He was the son of architecth L. J. Oppenheimer and Edith Newton.

Oppenheimer was educated at Manchester University, receiving a B.A. in 1914, and joined his family company, L. Oppenheimer Ltd., as a mosaic craftsman, after graduating.

He served in World War I in the British Army, 29th Manchester Regiment from 1914 to 1918, rising to captain. In 1915 he married Isabel Aileen Vinicombe in 1915, and in 1918 he changed his surname to Newton (his mother's) to avoid association with Germany.

While a member of F. Sladen-Smith's amateur dramatic group, the Unnamed Society, Manchester, he met the dress designer and later costume historian Stella Mary Pearce. They fell in love, and in 1934 he divorced his wife and married Pearce.

Early in 1935 Newton delivered twelve BBC radio lectures, "The Artist and His Public," which appeared as his first book the same year. He moved to London in 1936 to be closer to the exhibitions, and traveled to North America to lecture between 1936 and 1937 on behalf of the National Gallery of Canada.

In 1947 he left the Manchester paper to be art critic for the Sunday Times in London. However, after a controversial review of a Royal Academy of Art exhibition in 1950, he was dismissed by the paper, succeeded at the Times by John Russell. Newton returned to Manchester University and completed an M.A. in 1951, which included a thesis was on Tintoretto. Newton turned this into a book in 1952.

Newton returned to the Guardian in 1956, holding the Slade Professorship of art at Oxford for the 1959 to 1960 year. His most popular work, The Romantic Rebellion, was published in 1962, three years before his death. He collapsed at his London office and died at age 71.