Kyffin Williams

Welsh ArtistWelsh ArtistBy JamesBy James

Kyffin WilliamsKyffin Williams• Williams was born in Llangefni, Anglesey.

• His father was a bank manager.

• Kyffin Williams was educated at Moreton Hall School then Shrewsbury School before joining the 6th Battalion Royal Welch Fusiliers as a lieutenant in 1937. After he failed a British Army medical examination in 1941 (because of epilepsy), his doctor advised him to take up art for the sake of his health.

Personal LifePersonal Life

Kyffin WilliamsKyffin Williams• Williams enrolled at London's Slade School of Fine

Art in 1941 and taught art at Highgate School, London, where he was senior art master from 1944 until 1973.

• His pupils included the historian Sir Martin Gilbert, Royal Academicians Anthony Green and Patrick Procktor and composers John Tavener and John Rutter. In 1968 he won a scholarship (Winston Churchill Fellowship) to study and paint in Y Wladfa; the Welsh settlement in Patagonia.

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Kyffin WilliamsKyffin Williams• Williams died on 1 September 2006, aged 88, at a

nursing home in Anglesey. He had been suffering from lung cancer, believed to be a result of working with lead-based paints.

• Williams was buried at St Mary's Church, Llanfair-yng-Nghornwy.

• In 2006, the Welsh singer and Manic Street Preachers frontman James Dean Bradfield included a track called "Which Way to Kyffin", dedicated to Williams, on his album The Great Western.

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