Artist. He is remembered for his modern paintings of angels, fools, and spirits, which is associated with the Surrealist Movement. Over the 20th Century, James Henry Cecil Collins became an important part of British art. He was an artist that deviated from the "norm" and refused to easily fall into a category of art. Although he was Surrealist at times, he frequently touched on Neo-Romantic too. On a scholarship, he attended Plymouth School of Art from 1924 to 1927 and the Royal College of Art in London from 1927 to 1931. At the Royal College he was the recipient of the William Rothestein Life Drawing Prize. On April 3, 1931, he married Elisabeth Ramsden, a sculpture student who was an inspiration to him throughout his lifetime. In 1933, the couple traveled to Paris, France, to acquaint themselves with other artists of that era. In October 1935, Collins held his first exhibition at the Bloomsbury Gallery showing some of his most important early paintings, including his 1933 mystical piece, “The Fall of Lucifer.” In 1936 he published a poem in the “The New English Weekly” and had a drawing included in the International Exhibition of Surrealism in the New Burlington Galleries. The same year he attended an American artist, Mark Tobey's classes at Dartington Hall in Devonshire, England; held a show at the Barn Studio in 1937; and after Tobey's departure from the Hall in 1938, Collins taught there in 1939 to 1943. He developed a taste for the Far East art and German Expression while beginning his series of “Fools.” During World War II, his exhibit at the Lefevre's flew off the walls during an air raid; two more exhibits followed by the end of the war. His book, “The Vision of the Fool” describes his view of the world; although written in the early 1940's, it was not published until 1947. Between 1944 and 1948, he divided his time between London and Cambridge. In 1951 he taught life drawing part-time at the Central School of Art in London. In Cambridge he and his wife were part of a circle of artists who founded the Cambridge Society of Painters and Sculptors in 1955. He had a major retrospective at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1959. After moving to Chelsea in 1970, he received a number of religious commissions; one being an altar for the Chapel of St. Clement in Chichester Cathedral in 1973. In 1979, he was awarded the MBE, the “Member of the British Empire” medal, which is usually presented in a formal ceremony at Buckingham Palace. In 1981 he had a retrospective showing of his prints at the the Tate Gallery, Britain's National Gallery of Modern Art, and another show there of paintings and drawings in 1989. It was during this exhibition that he died. As with many artists, he enjoyed little acclaim in his lifetime. With his eccentric style and free-thinker personality, he has been compared to William Blake. There have been several books published about him and his works, the first being in 1946 Alex Comfort's “Cecil Collins: Paintings and Drawing in 1935 to 1945.”