Rackstraw Downes

English, b. 1939

BiographyRackstraw Downes (born 1939) is a British-born realist painter and author. His oil paintings are notable for their meticulous detail accumulated during months of plein-air sessions, depictions of industry and the environment, and elongated compositions with complex perspective.

Born Rodney Harry Rackstraw Downes in Pembury, Kent, England, he moved to the United States and studied painting as an exchange student at The Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Connecticut from 1957-58. He then returned to England and attended Cambridge University, where he was at St John's College and received a Bachelor of Arts in English literature. Back in the United States, he studied at the Yale School of Art with Neil Welliver, Al Held and Alex Katz, and he received a Master of Fine Arts in painting in 1964. Originally an abstract painter, in 1966 Downes changed course and began working in the realist, plein-air style he is known for.

He has written for The New York Times, Art in America, Art News, The New Criterion, and other publications. He also edited Art In Its Own Terms: Selected Criticism, 1935–1975, a collection of Fairfield Porter's writing. Downes' own writing has been published in two small paperbacks.

Downes received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1998. In 1999 he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 2009 he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship 'genius award'. In 1982 he was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate member, and became a full Academician in 1994.

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