William Dring

Dring was born in Streatham, London and studied at the Slade School of Fine Art between 1922 and 1925, where he won several prizes and scholarships.

[2] In the late 1920s Dring was commissioned by the architects Edwin Lutyens and Albert Edward Richardson to paint a number of murals.

In early 1942 he resigned from Southampton School of Art to work on a full-time contract for the Committee, specialising in Admiralty portraits.

[5] Sixty-four of Drings war-time portraits, mostly pastels are in the collection of the Imperial War Museum, who also hold five oil paintings by him.

[8] He recorded the presentation of the freedom of the City of London to the future Queen Elizabeth in 1947 and produced a series of five portraits for Lincoln's Inn that included pictures of both Lord Hailsham and Margaret Thatcher.