Born in 1941, Tom Coates studied at the Bournville College of Art, the Birmingham College of Art and then went to the Royal Academy Schools in 1961, when Sir Henry Rushbury was Keeper and Peter Greenham Professor. Throughout his career, Coates has taught at various art schools while devoting the majority of his time to full-time painting. In 1992 he was awarded the Horse and Hound Royal Ascot prize and the painting was presented to HM The Queen, to mark the 40th anniversary of her accession. He has recently produced works for the military and watercolours for HRH The Prince of Wales. In 2000 he was commissioned to be artist for the MCC in South Africa with the England cricket team. He is Past President of the New English Art Club, the Royal Society of British Artists and the Pastel Society and is a member of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters. Coates travels widely and frequently to Venice in company with his wife, the painter Mary Jackson. Together with Peter Kuhfeld and Richard Pikesley, the couple form part of the group who started exhibiting at he NEAC in the mid-1970s, which Kenneth McConkey has described as a ‘cluster of painterly plein-airistes (who) ensured the furtherance of New English Impressionism’. Like latter-day Grand Tourists, they tend to head south for inspiration.