Background
Born in the Edgbaston district of Birmingham, England on 31 October 1890, son of a coal merchant called Arthur Brockhurst, he soon showed precocious drawing skills and entered the Birmingham School of Art at the age of twelve.
Born in the Edgbaston district of Birmingham, England on 31 October 1890, son of a coal merchant called Arthur Brockhurst, he soon showed precocious drawing skills and entered the Birmingham School of Art at the age of twelve.
During the 1930s and 1940s he was celebrated as a portraitist, painting society figures such as Marlene Dietrich and the Duchess of Windsor. This led to a closer study of such 15th century artists as Piero della Francesca, Botticelli and Leonardo da Vinci, whose work had an abiding influence on him. Brockhurst held his first important exhibition in 1919, in London, and after it was well received returned to live there.
Throughout the 1930s he continued an increasingly successful career as a portrait artist, with notable sitters including the film stars Merle Oberon and Marlene Dietrich, as well as the Duchess of Windsor, whose husband commissioned her portrait.
In 1937 Brockhurst was elected to the Royal Academy and was able to command a price of 1,000 guineas for a portrait. In the same year however details of his relationship with his young model Kathleen Woodward, whom he had renamed Dorette, were made public after she gave an interview to the Sunday Express.
In New York, Brockhurst became both famous and rich with a series of society portraits but his printmaking output diminished, especially his etchings. He produced a few lithographs at the end of his career (around 1945).
In 1951, he was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate member.
In 1958, he appeared as a guest challenger on the television panel show "To Tell The Truth". Brockhurst and Dorette settled in Franklin Lakes, New Jersey, and Brockhurst died there on 4 May 1978.