The Publicity Section

Anthony Christian's life has been an amazing journey, and the newspapers have followed him on most of that journey. In this section of the Website are key newspaper articles from Christian's past to present day. They tell the story of the artist, Anthony Christian, in the public eye beginning in 1957, when he began work on The Battle Scene.

The newspapers announced him as a Child Prodigy since, at only ten years of age, he was standing with his canvas in front of some of the greatest works of art ever produced in The National Gallery, making him the youngest person ever to have permission to copy there. This honour is normally reserved for professional artists and students, but certainly never to anyone under the age of eighteen, making Christian's position unique even to this day. For the press that would be a story in itself, but the thing that really grabbed their attention was the subject that Christian had chosen to copy and the sheer quality of the work he was producing.

The painting he was copying was Philip Wouwermans' 'A Cavalry Battle', a superbly intricate and mind-bogglingly detailed work measuring 6 feet by 4 feet 6 inches. A painting so complex that no other artist has ever dared to master it. Yet here was a ten year old school boy, who could not even reach the top of his canvas, doing exactly that, and doing it with remarkable skill. It took him over six years to complete and during that time he had received offers up to $25,000.

By the early sixties he was making a name for himself as a portrait painter, receiving commissions from the world's rich and famous, which of course sent him all over the world from New York to Nepal. Come the eighties and he was considered 'the worlds foremost Renaissance style painter'. But the commissions never pleased him. His clients rarely wanted an image of themselves as he saw them, but an image they saw through a mirror of their vanity and would go as far as to cajole the artist into giving them a 'nose-job' or a 'face lift'.

Eventually it all became too much for the artist who only wanted to paint truth and beauty and the beauty within truth, so he left the mainstream market and sought refuge in Asia on a new journey, a journey of physical endurance and spiritual revelation. And thus Anthony Christian disappeared from the world. He continued to paint in Asia, in fact he accelerated by being free to his own style and inspiration. He experimented with technique and genre creating truly original and truly magnificent works of art the likes of which the whole world was oblivious to.

But now, finally, after almost twenty years, Anthony Christian has returned from Asia and is now living in West Yorkshire on a beautiful estate surrounded by trees. Now, once again, may his work be shared with the world.