Charles Oppenheimer RSA 1875-1961

Mr. Charles Oppenheimer, who was 85, died in Kirkcudbright where he had lived and painted for fifty-two years. He was a well-known figure in the Artists' Community and Kirkcudbright and its environment seemed to him to be the ideal place to paint.

He was very sympathetic to the Scottish School of Painting; by birth a Manchester man, who never lost his Lancashire accent. His father, Ludwig Oppenheimer, had been engaged in mosaic decorative work in Cathedral interiors and he himself had studied under R. H. A. Willis and Walter Crane at the Manchester School of Art and in Italy. 

He served in the 1914 war on the Western Front in the ranks of the Royal Artillery.

In 1927 Oppenheimer was elected an Associate of the Royal Scottish Academy and in 1934 a full Academician, having by this time established a reputation as a sensitive painter of Nature, exhibiting in the Royal Scottish Academy, the Royal Academy and the Royal Glasgow Institute.

His works depicted the changes of the seasons, summer and winter aspects of Kirkcudbright and the Galloway scene. His love for the different moods of nature and for quiet and running water, was the source of his inspiration. The Highlands seemed too epic for him - this tall, wiry man, deliberate and earnest in speech.

It does not seem so very long ago the Oppenheimer and his wife paid one of their periodic visits to the hotel in Rutland Square where they habitually stayed when they motored to Edinburgh to visit the Royal Scottish Academy, a theatre or concert hall.

Meeting them on a chance occasion one could not be impressed by the vitality and courage of them both and perhaps one was a bit apprehensive as they set forth in their aged car on the long return journey to their much loved Kirkcudbright. Oppenheimer had a delightful personality and though he latterly found it impossible to take part in affairs, his loyalty and affection towards the Academy was undiminished.

RSA Obituary, transcribed from the 1961 RSA Annual Report