Daly, Jehan (1918-2001)

Born of French and Irish parents, Jehan (pronounced John) Daly was noted for his draughtsmanship, especially in pastel. He enrolled at the Royal College of Art in 1937 where he became a great friend of the artist John Ward, CBE, RA (1917-2007). In 1939 the two men enlisted together in the Royal Engineers. After the war they shared a flat in Fulham, where, according to Ward, Daly ‘worked for thirty years oblivious of fashion and undisturbed by the fluctuations of acclaim… enabling him to produce a body of work quite unlike anything else produced in this country’.

Daly took up a teaching post at St Martin’s School of Art. In 1980 he moved to Adisham, near Canterbury under the patronage of Colin George, where he worked and exhibited until his death. He was reluctant to show his works, but he did exhibit at the Royal Academy and the New English Art Club, and had one-man shows at Agnew’s, the Maas Gallery, in Canterbury and at Martyn Gregory in 1993 and 1997. He never married and was described by people who knew him as an otherworldly bachelor.