Lord Barnard (Harry John Neville Vane), a landowner and the custodian of 14th-century Raby Castle in County Durham, died on 3 April, aged 92. The son of the tenth baron, Vane was educated at Eton and served as an RAF officer in the Second World War. He succeeded his father as Lord Barnard in 1964. The castle was the birthplace of Cecily Neville, the mother of the 15th-century kings Edward IV and Richard III. It houses a large family collection of works by artists such as Giordano, Van Dyck, Lely, De Hooch, Teniers the Younger, Sebastiano, Marco Ricci, Reynolds and Batoni.
William J. “Bill” Cunningham, the fashion photographer for the New York Times, died on 25 June, aged 87. Born in Boston, he dropped out of Harvard University and moved to New York where he worked in the advertising department of Bonwit Teller. After serving in the US army during the Korean War, he returned in 1953 to New York where he worked as a designer for Chanel, Givenchy and Dior. A self-taught photographer, his work was published in the New York Times and over 40 years he photographed everyday people, socialites and fashion personalities, making an historical record of the city’s clothes styles. He created his own collection of vintage fashions, which he published in 1978.
David King, the graphic designer, photographer and collector of Soviet-era artefacts, died on 11 May, aged 73. Born in London, he studied at the London School of Printing and Graphic Arts. In 1965 he became the art editor of the Sunday Times Magazine. He first visited Russia in 1970, and became fascinated by the country’s pre-glasnost history and culture, collecting everything from Russian Revolution to Khrushchev-era art. Over several decades he amassed 250,000 items and wrote extensively about the period. His graphic work featured on record sleeves (for Jimi Hendrix and The Who), and agit-prop for left-wing causes. He also designed catalogues for the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford, where his work is the subject of an exhibition (until 18 August).
Anatol Kovarsky, a cartoonist and cover artist for The New Yorker from the late 1940s to the 1970s, died on 1 June, aged 97. Born in Moscow, he grew up in Poland and studied economics in Vienna. Abandoning his academic studies, he enrolled in the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris, until the advance of the Nazis forced him and his family to flee, eventually to the US, where he joined the army. After the Second World War, he began to submit items to The New Yorker and became a frequent contributor, producing some 300 cartoons for the magazine. Typical is an image of a castaway on a raft over which looms a Hokusai wave, saying to his companion, “We’re in Japanese waters, that’s for sure.”
Kenneth Painter, a deputy keeper of Greek and Roman antiquities at the British Museum and its organiser of blockbuster exhibitions, died on 14 May, aged 81. He attended Bristol Grammar School and read Greats at Oxford, where he took his degree in 1956. He was appointed in 1960 to the British Museum, where he oversaw the Romano-British collection and became an expert on silver plate and glass. He wrote prolifically about the collection and organised blockbuster exhibitions such as Wealth of the Ancient World (1977) and Glass of the Caesars (1988).
Tunga (Antonio José de Barros Carvalho e Mello Mourão), one of Brazil’s best known contemporary artists, died on 6 June, aged 64. Born in Palmares, Pernambuco, Tunga lived and worked in Rio de Janeiro. He made his mark with his often surreal sculpture, performance works and video. He was chosen to stand for Brazil at Documenta X in 1997, was one of four artists representing his country at the 2001 Venice Biennale and his work has appeared four times at the São Paulo Biennial. In 2005, his was the first work of contemporary art to be included in an exhibition at the Louvre.