Fred Mayor was born on December 21st 1866 at Winksley, near Ripon, Yorkshire. He was educated at St. Edmund's School Canterbury, where he took to drawing and also to cricket, showing such prowess at the game that his headmaster foretold a professional's career for him.

It was art which prevailed, and during his early days he shared a studio at Chiswick, London with Sir Frank Brangwyn, with whom he also shared a single suit for alternate visits to the theater. Like many young painters at this time, in 1886 Mayor went to Paris and studied at the Academie Julian. It was during this period that he met Wilson Steer and Walter Sickert, who became lifelong friends and had a great influence on his work.

Fred Mayor's first artistic breakthrough was to have one of his paintings accepted at The Royal Academy of Arts in 1888 when he was just twenty-one.

In 1899 he went to live in Staithes, an early artists colony, where his fellow painters were Harold and Dame Laura Knight, also Harrington Mann and a young Sheffield born artist, Hannah Hoyland, later to become his wife.

In 1902 he and Hannah eloped to Montreuil-sur-Mer in northern France, where they spent several years and their two sons were born. It was in Montreuil that Fred Mayor developed the light, impressionistic style with which he is so clearly identified. In company with such fellow artists as Wilson Steer, he produced many spontaneous sketches and a few oils, of the market place and of the countryside of Northern France, filled with strong light, and splashes of vibrant color.

Early in 1909 the Mayors gave up their house in Montreuil and returned to England. Fred and Hannah lived at Whitchurch in Buckinghamshire, where in March that year their only daughter, Edith was born.

From Whitchurch they spent holidays in London, Falmouth, Portsmouth and Amberley where Mayor painted as enthusiastically as he did in the then Elm dotted Vale of Aylesbury. Close associates in this period were Philip Connard, Harrington Mann and Derwent Wood. In 1912 the family moved to 61 Earls Court Square in London, and later that year his paintings won him a Silver Medal at the International Exhibition in Amsterdam. One of his students in this period was Maud Burge from New Zealand, who was later to receive great acclaim in that country.

Mayor was a long time sufferer of severe asthma, and had to undergo what should have been a simple operation to fit him for military service as a war artist, but on January 10th 1916 with his wife at his bedside, he hemorrhaged and died. He was just forty-nine years old.

Fred Mayor exhibited at Le Salon, Paris, the Baillie Gallery, the Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts, the Goupil Gallery, the Walker Gallery Liverpool, the Leicester Gallery, the London Salon, Manchester City Art Gallery, the New English Art Club, the Royal Academy, the Royal Society of British Artists, the Royal Scottish Academy and the Yorkshire Union of Artists.

He has works in public collections in Birmingham, Leeds, Middlesbrough, Manchester, Sheffield, Whitby, the Tate Britain, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Imperial War Museum and the UK Government and New Zealand National Art Collections.

Source:
http://www.fredmayor.com