Caernarvon Castle I, 1971
John Piper was born in Buckinghamshire, He reluctantly became an articled clerk in his father's legal firm, but took up the study of art after his father's death in 1926, initially at the Richmond School of Art and subsequently at the Royal College of Art. From 1928 to 1933 he wrote as an art critic for the Listener and the Nation and was among the first to recognise contemporaries such as William Coldstream, Ivon Hitchens, Victor Pasmore, and Ceri Richards. By the mid-1930s he was one of the leading British abstract artists, although after a few years he become disillusioned with non-representational art and reverted to naturalism.
Piper focused on landscape and architectural views in a style that continued the English Romantic tradition. Some of his finest works were done as an Official War Artist capturing bomb-damaged buildings. A similar atmosphere is found in his views of country houses of the same period. Piper's work diversified in the 1950s and he became recognised as one of the most versatile British artists of his generation. He did much work as a designer of stage sets and of stained glass (notably at Coventry Cathedral) and was also a printmaker. Piper also illustrated books and designed pottery and textiles. As a writer he is probably best known for his book British Romantic Artists (1942). He also compiled architectural guidebooks to several English counties, usually in collaboration with the poet John Betjeman.