Nan Youngman
Nan Mayhew Youngman was a painter known for her realist landscapes and contribution to art education within schools. She studied at the Slade School of Fine Art (1924–27), earning her diploma under the guidance of Henry Tonks and Philip Wilson Steer. Youngman worked across various media during her career, including oil, watercolour, gouache, and charcoal. She began to teach at Highbury Hill Girls School in 1928 and trained to teach at the London Day Training College, where she developed a strong belief in the importance of art in the school curriculum. Youngman organised the ‘Pictures for Schools’ exhibitions, a scheme starting in 1947 that sold original artworks at affordable prices to schools and other education authorities. In 1936, Youngman joined the Artists International Association (AIA), a group of politically conscious painters, sculptors, and designers dedicated to resisting the rise of European Fascism and Nazism. Active in Cambridge, she was a member of the Cambridge Society of Painters and Sculptors, an Art Advisor for Cambridgeshire in 1944, and had a retrospective at Kettle’s Yard in 1986. She was awarded an OBE in 1987.
