A to Z of artists Lyne, Michael 1912 - 1989

Charles Edward Michael Lyne, born in 1912, was the youngest son of the Revd. Arundell and Joan Lyne who lived near Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire. As a boy, Michael quickly became interested in animals, sport and all aspects of rural life. His education at Rossall School was followed by an aborted attempt to become a vet and being articled briefly to a farmer in Worcestershire. By this time hunting and art were Lyne’s main preoccupation and passions. While at Cheltenham Art School he sold a number of watercolours and drawings through a local art dealer’s shop which, in turn, attracted attention and commissions from the Masters of two local packs of hounds, Captain H.A. Clive and Lt Col Cyril Heber-Percy. Later patrons included the Duke of Beaufort, Lord Knutsford and General Sir Willoughby Norrie. From 1936 he was illustrating his own and other authors’ books on hunting, and was soon recognised as a link in the chain of ‘modern’ sporting painters and illustrators following, and to a degree employing a similar manner of painting in oils and watercolours to F.A. Stewart (q.v.), Gilbert Holiday (q.v.) and Lionel Edwards (q.v.). After the Second World War, during which Lyne served in the Royal Armoured Corps, and now married, he settled in the Cotswolds to resume his painting career. There followed eleven one-man exhibitions in London between 1946 and 1979, others in the provinces and seven in the United States, which he visited on eight occasions. He became a regular contributor to The Field and Country Life as well as illustrating over thirty books on sport. He died suddenly at his home in the Gloucestershire on 20 March 1989.