Biography
Robin Ball was born at Telham Hill, near Battle, in 1910. Leaving school aged fourteen, Robin secured a position at a local landscape gardeners where his father worked. Showing an aptitude for art at an early age, for amusement, Robin and his father would often, of an evening, compete in making copies of cartoons, particularly Tom Webster sporting cartoons in the Daily Mail. Neither had any knowledge of or training in drawing but Robin developed an unsuspected gift for caricature from life and in his enthusiasm and wry sense of humour would often do humorous sketches of his workmates. It was these sketches which led to his manager suggesting Robin attend evening classes at Hastings Art School.
Winning awards for his art studies, Robin enrolled as a full-time student in 1934 and was to subsequently secure a place at the Royal College of Art, London. In 1939 Robin was awarded a travelling scholarship (a year’s travel and study in Europe plus a sum of money for expenses). Sadly, the outbreak of war in Europe was to prevent Robin from taking up this opportunity.
Robin was called up for military service in 1940 and after basic training, was posted to the Royal Artillery, Heavy anti-aircraft battery. Taking part in the D-Day landings, Robin’s battery was part of the British forces attached to the Canadian Army, seeing very active and heavy service along the Normandy coast.
All the way through Robin’s military service, from basic training to his time immediately after victory in Europe, Robin always carried with him his sketch books, pencils and colours. Some works were completed in-situ, others when able at a later date. Perhaps as a foil to the horrors surrounding him, in addition to more traditional depictions, Robin completed a body of work of somewhat more comic depictions of routine army life; medical and kit inspections, fatigue duties like cleaning latrines, rubbish bins, huts etc.
After demobilisation, Robin became a teacher at Farnham School of Art, later West Surrey College of Art and Design, where he remained for many decades, both teaching and continuing to produce his own art works.
Robin died in 1979, aged just sixty nine. He was a deeply serious man of great probity and personal honour and deep sense of social justice, yet with a dry wit and the comic sense of a knockabout comedian.
A number of Robin’s works from the war-era are held by The Imperial War Museum together with a short tape recording of Robin talking of his war experiences.
A retrospective of Robin’s works was staged by Connaught Brown, Mayfair, in 1987.
