Fred Yates

Jul 10 2008 by David Charters, Liverpool Daily Post

YOU don’t expect a great artist to be called Fred – Frederico, maybe, but not plain Fred.

That was not a name to grace the grand galleries until Fred Yates burst on the scene with his joyous, vividly coloured paintings of ordinary life.

It was LS Lowry with a broader smile.

Inevitably, he was compared to Lowry, as both men drew their ideas from the clog-clipping pavements, the skipping ropes, matchstick men and women, factories and tight terraces of northern towns.

In fact, a Yates painting came second to Lowry’s Going to the Match in an art competition run by the Football Association in 1954.

But there was a swirling of movement and colour which set Yates’s work apart. His style was also suited to the scenes of Cornwall and the Avignon area of France.

However, as a roaming soul, he found his material in people, wherever they may be. “It is the man in the street that I’m after and want to please,” he wrote.

The twin son of an insurance agent, Yates was brought up in Urmston, outside Manchester. With no great enthusiasm, he also entered the insurance business – a career broken by World War II, during which he served with the Grenadier Guards, returning to Manchester as a painter and decorator, after a spell with the Royal Household, which provided him with images of pomp and regalia.

Before becoming a full-time artist, Yates had taught for 20 years in Bournemouth and then in Brighton.

Although often described as “untutored”, despite his iron self-discipline, Yates had enrolled on a teachers’ training course at the Bournemouth College of Art, and in 1950 won a travelling scholarship to Rome and Florence.

Yates, also a fine pianist, was a restless soul who never married, living for periods in France and Cornwall. He was reminded of his own northern roots by the simple French towns in Provence, where he lived in the 1990s. “Simplicity” was a quality he admired and he often appeared on streets with his easel.

By the end of the last century, he was widely exhibited and cherished by dealers. A “Fred Yates” on the wall was a mark of good taste. His paintings are included in private and public collections including Liverpool University.

Last year his book, Fred Yates: C’est Votre Passion, Monsieur!, was published.

Fred Yates, artist; born July 22, 1922, died July 7, 2008.