On 3rd June 2020 we celebrated the 90th birthday of June Furlong, long-time model for the Liverpool Art School (which became part of Liverpool Polytechnic and later John Moores University), with this online exhibition.
It was with great sadness that we heard that June had passed away on 20th November 2020. June was a great friend of the Williamson and she will be missed.
Colin Simpson writes:
June was first suggested as a life model by Don McKinlay when she was 17 and she continued modelling up to the age of 65. Nearly every art student that passed through Liverpool between the 1960s and the early 1990s will have drawn or painted her at some point. She spent most of the 1950s in London, modelling at both the Slade School and the Royal College of Art, mixing with such artists as Lucien Freud and Frank Auerbach. The stories are told at length in her entertaining autobiography, written with Jill Block, June: A Life Study, published in 2000 to mark her 70th birthday.
June also spent several years organising exhibitions throughout the area by ‘Major Merseyside Artists’. Her list of contacts developed over those years at the Art School was enviable and there were several with whom she built very close relationships, most notably George Jardine.