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July 2, 2025
2025 will see the retirement of a member of staff who has given an amazing 44 years of his life to the teaching of art to a great many Wycliffe College pupils. Steven Hubbard (Staff Member 1981-2025 & Hon. OW) will be leaving Wycliffe this month after more than four decades, seven Head teachers and a great deal of change across Wycliffe College.
Below, you can read a brief account of Steven’s time at Wycliffe, as well as his life as a successful artist.
We’d love to post the memories you have of Steven, while at Wycliffe. His teaching and influence, art trips, in the studio etc. Please email them to tws@wycliffe.co.uk. We’ll post a selection on this page.
On behalf of all OWs, Hon. OWs and former Wycliffe parents/guardians we thank you Steven for your many, many(!) years of dedication, hard work and the positive impact you’ve had on pupils and wish you a happy retirement from teaching at Wycliffe.
I was appointed as a part-time artist in residence by Richard Poulton (Head of Wycliffe College 1980-85), the first of seven Wycliffe Heads I have worked under since I arrived in the Spring term in 1981. His wife ran an art gallery, and he was keen to encourage the arts.
Early on it was an old-fashioned school, with some masters wearing gowns and Morter boards. Staff smoked whilst teaching, (a maths teacher famously had an ash tray in all four corners of his classroom with a cigarette in each), there was sherry in the staff room, and cakes were provided for staff at break time!
My first Head of Dept was Peter Beynon, who was a motorcycling legend in the school, (he owned a Moto Guzzi), and had been here for an extraordinary 20 years! He was a very practical man, and a stonemason. He, among others (including some of the boys), helped rebuild the chapel. He was the only art teacher until I arrived. On my first day here he just gave me his Year 9s and instead of artist in residence I became his assistant. I have had six HODs since, culminating in the best, Nikki Green.
Having never taught before, my old tutor from art school gave me a few pointers before I arrived, as he had taught in a boy’s school early in his career. His most salient tip was ‘never enter the store cupboard when the key is in the door’, as he had languished there for a whole afternoon when his class locked him in!
My Mother and uncle were both artists. Initially I taught part-time to survive as an artist, later I realised I enjoyed it! When I first worked here, I was starting out and was selling watercolours in smaller galleries in the area. In the Mid 80s I entered the National Portrait Gallery Young Portrait Artist of the Year competition with my first oil painting and the first portrait I had ever done. Much to my surprise I was shortlisted and won a prize. Even more extraordinarily, I was approached in a rather cloak and dagger fashion by the director of the NPG to ask if I would sell my prize-winning portrait to a client and also, perhaps, do some commissions. I agreed, and the client turned out to be the Chair of Governors at the NPG, Master of Christ’s College Cambridge and historian Sir John Plumb. He commissioned me to paint a group of his close friends, and I worked regularly for him for about six years, enjoying good meals, wine and conversation with him every time I delivered a portrait!
During this period, I also painted two portraits for Wycliffe College, one of Tony Millard Head of Wycliffe College (1985-94), now hanging in the dining hall, and T Lloyd Robinson (OW H 1925-30, Chair of Governors 1970-83 & President of Wycliffe 1988-96) which is in the Council Chamber.
In the 90s, I was taken on by an important commercial gallery in Mayfair, The Francis Kyle Gallery, and I showed there until Francis retired in 2014. By this time, I had turned my back on portraiture and developed my own idiosyncratic work that combined painting, gilding, marquetry and wood carving. These works are now in collections all over Europe and America. There are examples in public collections at the Royal Holloway and Stroud’s Museum in the Park.
By the time Francis Kyle retired I had begun to make multiblock Lino prints, and after the gallery closed these became my focus of creativity. With them I have been accepted at the Royal Academy of Arts Summer exhibition on 12 occasions, including this years’ exhibition which runs from June 17th to August 17th 2025. I also show them in several galleries throughout the UK, and they are represented in the permanent print collection of San Diego University, USA.
Wycliffe has changed very much since I first walked through the gates. However, it has for the most part been a friendly and interesting environment in which to teach, and I have made many connections over the years with both students and staff. I have taught sons and daughters, and even perhaps grandsons and daughters of former students. On occasion I am accosted by a 45-year-old and told I taught them, and I apologise for the fact that, at this distance in time, I am not always able to recall exactly who they are. Many students, however, are memorable, and there are some former students, who I have retained contact with, and seen regularly, for decades, (you know who you are!). Some of those students have become much more successful artists than I, and I’m proud to have had some small part in their journey.
When people have asked me why, until now, I have always remained teaching, I have a flippant answer, although there is a grain of truth within it. I say, “I still enjoy being called an idiot by a teenager”, and the true part is I really like the youth, vigour, enthusiasm, curiosity, forthrightness and sometimes surprising depth of thought and unknown skills that one comes across in the art room when working alongside young people. An added bonus has been that for the past 15 years I have also worked with a wonderful group of adults in art that made the job a joy. We have achieved amazing things with often initially un-promising material, and that is down to the extraordinary creativity and dedication of Nikki Green, Rose Wordsworth and Alex Norman-Walker. A better art team has not worked at this school in the last 44 years.
– Steven Hubbard (Staff Member 1981-2025 & Hon. OW)
