Roger Desoutter, 1923 ~ Maritime painter

Born and educated at Mill Hill, Roger Charles Desoutter, British painter, went on to obtain a degree in engineering at Loughborough; after which he was chosen, in 1942, to join the team of Sir Frank Whittle, engaged in the design and development of the first jet engines, which occupied him until 1945. Most of his spare time during this period was making sketches in pen and ink, and pastels, as well as producing technical drawings for engineering publications.

He had to abandon all hopes of a full-time artistic career in 1947, when the unexpected death of his father necessitated his joining the family engineering business of which he is now Chairman. He married in 1950, and was encouraged by his wife to devote all his spare moments to the study of oil painting, resulting in a number of his works being exhibited and sold for the first time at the Guildhall Annual Exhibition of the Society of Aviation Artists in 1955. In the years to come, Desoutter sought to extend his talents in painting and turned his attentions from aeronautical studies to encompass landscape and marine subjects. Inspiration for many of his landscapes was drawn from his experiences as a child spent with his French parents, his grandfather originally emigrated from Normandy in 1888. He was greatly affected by the feeling of space and the endless vistas of the flat countryside, and tall sentinel rows of poplars lining the avenues that wound away to the horizon.