Derek Davenport was born in Strangeways in 1938. He was one of seven children, living in one of the most deprived areas of Manchester. He, along with all of his brothers and sisters, were taken into care during World War 2. He spent eight years in an orphanage at Styal in Cheshire.
His first employment was as a raincoat cutter. Later he took up a position as a silver service waiter at the Grand Hotel in Manchester, where he made the acquaintance of L.S.Lowry who often dined there. Having shown Lowry some of his work, Lowry encouraged him to take up painting, though Lowry advised him to avoid attending Art School for fear it would spoil his instinctive talent. Davenport met up with Lowry several times over the next few years as he lived in Glossop and Lowry lived in the next village of Mottram. They met right up until Lowry’s death in 1976. On the advice of Lowry, Davenport signed his paintings with the initials STA (self taught artist) after his name.
His distinctive oil paintings capture charming and nostalgic scenes of the 1940-50s Northern urban settings and close community life. His insight into human nature is colourfully and humorously portrayed with his many different characters.
Lowry’s influence is clear. In the early days, Davenport would copy Lowry’s work, but decided to paint his pictures based upon memories of scenes from his own childhood. Davenport admired the work of Georges Seurat, the French post-impressionist artist, and adopted Seurat’s pointillism as his favourite technique of self expression. Davenport’s evocative images and pointillism style were particularly popular in the mid-1900s.
His paintings are admired particularly by collectors of artworks depicting the historical Northern industrial era, which has disappeared from our landscape.
For health reasons, Davenport moved his family to Torquay in 1993 and nothing more has been heard of him since.
