Renowned art critic and broadcaster Brian Sewell has died at the age of 84, his agent has confirmed.
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But he sparked outrage in artistic circles by Sewell attacking modern art and the Turner Prize – branding Damian Hirst “f–g dreadful” and saying that Banksy “should have been put down at birth”.
Mr Sewell who was considered an expert on the French artist Poussin was the art critic for the London Evening Standard newspaper over a 30 year period.
The Evening Standard, long-time employers of Mr Sewell, said in a statement: “All of us at the Evening Standard are so very, very sorry to hear of Brian’s death”.
He was a frequent arts commentator in the press and across broadcast media.
Sewell was known for being outspoken and was often very critical, which helped earn him the reputation as one of the most controversial figures in the art world.
“Simply, Brian was the nation’s best art critic, best columnist and the most brilliant and sharpest writer in recent times”.
Born in Market Bosworth, Leicestershire in 1931, Sewell was raised by his mother in Kensington, London, following the death of his father, the composer Philip Heseltine.
He later studied for a degree in art history from the Courtauld Institute.
In 1979 Blunt was exposed as “the Fourth Man” in the Burgess-Maclean spy scandal.
His career started at Christie’s in the 1950s and he counted legendary artists, including Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud and Salvador Dali, among his personal friends.
Paying tribute, fellow art critic Charles Darwent described Sewell as ‘fantastic’.
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Describing the devastation the disease had wreaked on his body earlier this year, he said: “Cancer has turned me into an old dog in a vivisection laboratory”. “I wanted to write the great book on Michelangelo and I never got anywhere near it and now it is too late”, he said.
