Valerie Thornton, British (1931 – 1991)
Valerie Thornton, painter and printmaker, was born in London in 1931. She was a pupil at Elinor Birley's Primary School and, during the war, she and her brothers were evacuated to Montreal where she attended the Montreal Girl's High School. In 1944, she returned to London and began her art studies in 1949 at the Byam Shaw School of Drawing and Painting. She attended the Regent Street Polytechnic under P.F. Millard between 1950 and 1953 and, in 1954, Thornton spent eight months at Stanley William Hayter's Atelier 17. Between 1963 and 1964, she lived in New York working for ten months at Pratt Graphics Art Center.
In the mid 1950s Thornton's work was included in the exhibition of the Regent Street Group at the Walkers Galleries on Bond Street. She was a member of the Philadelphia Print Club and she was a founding member of the Printmakers' Council. In 1970, she was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Painters-Etchers and Engravers.
Thornton's work has been included in many exhibitions and a retrospective was mounted in 1974. Her work is represented in the collections of the Royal Academy, Victoria and Albert Museum, British Museum, Tate Gallery, Fitzwilliam Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, New York Public Library, Bibliotheque Nationale and the Albertina Museum.
