My father, Robert Clement, who has died aged 84, educated and supported art teachers and wrote the popular textbook The Art Teacher’s Handbook (1986).
Bob thought art education should give children the skills to respond with confidence to their individual view of themselves and their world. He thought it vital for teachers to have a rich and intriguing collection of source materials in their classrooms and believed that everyone can draw, citing one eight-year-old who, when asked how he made a drawing, replied, “I think, and then I draw a line round my think.”
He studied as an artist and art teacher at the Bath Academy of Art in Corsham from 1956 to 1959, under its principal Clifford Ellis, who had been taught by Sickert, a protege of Degas, a link of which he was proud, although the main influences on his art were the landscapes of Paul Nash, Eric Ravilious and Graham Sutherland.
Bob was born in Erdington, Birmingham, the son of Arthur, a sales clerk at Dunlop who trained at night school to become a chief engineer at the factory, and his wife, Rose (nee Mallen), a cook and housekeeper. At 13, operations for mastoiditis left Bob partially deaf. After outpatient check-ups, instead of returning to class at King Edward VI school, Aston, he would go to Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, where he particularly liked Millais’s The Blind Girl. So began his love of art.
Combining this with his passion for theatre, he trained as a theatre designer at Birmingham School of Art. For four years he designed and painted scenery at the Criterion theatre in the city, and in Weston-super-Mare, where he met and married Brenda Jennison. The set design he was most proud of was for Capek’s The Insect Play.
In 1955, having seen provincial theatres, hit by television, playing safe with comedies and thrillers, he abandoned the design of “endless living rooms” and went to teach at secondary schools in Sittingbourne, Kent (1959-60), then at Bideford in Devon (1961-66). Bob would borrow a neighbour’s chickens and pigeons to “sit” for the pupils.
Hoping to help more children explore art by training their teachers, he lectured at Loughborough College of Education (1966-70), and was art adviser to Devon schools from 1970 until his retirement in 1992, when he became visiting professor at the University of Plymouth. He was appointed OBE for his work in art curriculum development.
He was chair of the Schools Council Art Committee (1978-83) and president of the National Society for Education in Art and Design (1985). He wrote several books and revised The Art Teacher’s Handbook to include new media.
His marriage to Brenda ended amicably in 1975, and in 1978 Bob met Jane Carruthers Kay, through a colleague. They settled in Topsham, Devon, and married in 2003. His later paintings were mostly of Dartmoor, where he and Jane spent every summer in an old caravan next to the river Swincombe, where they loved to swim. He also enjoyed exhibitions and theatre, and was dancing to the Rolling Stones at a party two months before he died.
He is survived by Jane, by his children, Matthew, Rachel and me, by his grandsons, Joel, Calum and Jonah, and by his brother David.
