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Arthur Jackson studied medicine at Cambridge University, following in the footsteps of his father, before abandoning his studies to train as an artist at Central Saint Martins School of Art from 1929 to 1932. Jackson found lodgings in Hampstead and was taken under the wing of his cousin Dame Barbara Hepworth and her future husband Ben Nicholson, who were older and more established artists at the forefront of the Modernist movement. Nicholson soon became Jackson’s tutor and the pair exhibited together in Nicolete Gray’s 1936 exhibition Abstract and Concrete alongside Hepworth and other notable modern artists such as Alexander Calder, Wassily Kandinsky, Joan Miró and Henry Moore. In order to avoid confusion, there was a tactical decision between the two Hepworths, with the more junior of them, adopting the name Arthur Jackson.

An epicentre of modernist ideals, Hampstead was a hotbed of creative energy whereby artistic practices and crafts such as textiles, design, architecture and visual art interlinked to channel the new abstract and constructivist ethos. International artists who championed abstraction such as Naum Gabo, László Moholy-Nagy and Piet Mondrian settled in Hampstead alongside leading architects such as Wells Coates, the modernist designer and architect of the 1934 Isokon building in Hampstead. Living at No. 22 Parkhill Road, Jackson resided in the midst of the movement, with Moore’s studio opposite, Nicholson and Hepworth at number 7 and Herbert Read living on Parkhill Road for some time in the thirties.

Jackson’s interests extended beyond painting and after the war Jackson completed his architectural studies and joined Leslie Martin, working on projects such as the Royal Festival Hall. His passion for architecture can be seen in the present works, in his utilisation and harmonisation of his geometric forms.