Sydney Carter

Biography

Sydney Carter (1874–1945) was an English-born South African artist, illustrator and educator. He studied in London (Walthamstow School of Art and the Royal College) before moving to South Africa in 1923. Carter traveled extensively before settling in Johannesburg in 1926, later teaching art at the Witwatersrand Technical College. He painted mainly in gouache and oil, focusing on landscapes, trees, farm cottages and South African vistas. In the 1930s he painted murals in the Cape Town and Johannesburg post offices. Carter was also a book illustrator (for Dickens, Austen, Brontë) and a talented artist whose sensitive depictions of rural scenes are held in South African museums. His work appears in major collections such as the Iziko National Gallery and Pretoria Art Museum.