Original Oil on Canvas 'Protecting the Vines, France' by Guy Roddon 1919-2006

He was educated at Bryanston school, in Dorset, where a lecture on Cézanne by the art critic RH Wilenksi proved a further step in his decision to become an artist. He went on to Goldsmiths College, London, and to the Byam Shaw School of Art, from neither of which he greatly profited. Along with many artists during the second world war - including William Coldstream, Claude Rogers and Julian Trevelyan - Roddon found a comfortable billet, diverting work and genial company in the Camouflage Corps. In his first posting, to Farnham castle, Surrey, he was under the command of Colonel Jack Beddington, the suave director of Wildenstein's, and the gallery owner Freddy Mayor. Following a transfer to Norwich, he was one of a band of camouflage officers working for the theatre designer Oliver Messel. After the war Roddon earned a living by teaching. He was artist-in-residence at the University of North California, lectured at Goldsmiths and was on the staff of Brighton College of Art. Roddon inherited his father's restless temperament, and out of term time he painted in north Africa, America and Europe - above all in France, where he produced much of his best work. In Paris he often borrowed the studio of his friend Edwin John, but he was just as likely to be found sketching at a pavement cafe or in the secluded corner of a left-bank restaurant. Until the end of his life he was a frequent visitor to Menton, on the Côte d'Azur, and a regular member of the English delegation that, each year on the anniversary of Aubrey Beardsley's death, processed to the hill-top cemetery and laid a wreath on his grave. Roddon never lost his disarming wit, nor the mischievous glint in his eye. He was an essentially kindly and good-humoured man, whose occasional testiness betrayed some of the disappointment he must have felt at his critical neglect. In old age - bearded, dressed in well-tailored but shabby clothes, and invariably sporting a French beret - he seemed a relic from a long extinct bohemian world. At the time of his death he was the longest-standing member of the Chelsea Arts Club, which he had joined more than 60 years earlier.