Patrick Heron was born in Headingley, Leeds, in 1920. He studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, London, between 1937 and 1939. From 1945, Heron resumed painting and also wrote as an art critic for The New English Weekly and The New Statesman and Nation. In 1956, he returned to Cornwall where he lived and worked until his death in March 1999. From 1980 to 1987, he was a Trustee of the Tate Gallery, London. He received Honorary Doctorates from Exeter and Kent Universities, Winchester School of Art and the Royal College of Art, London, amongst others. Heron won the Grand Prize at the John Moores Prize Exhibition in Liverpool in 1959 and the silver medal at the São Paulo Art Biennial in 1965. He held retrospective exhibitions at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1972 and at the Barbican Art Gallery in 1985. He visited Australia in 1967, 1973, and 1989 exhibiting at the Bonython Gallery, Sydney. A major retrospective of Heron's work was organised by the Tate Gallery, London in 1998.