Claudia Williams “always loved company”. Her compassion, curiosity and convivial nature come across in the exuberant, often large-scale figure compositions she created during a career spanning seven decades. An only child who would become a mother of four, Williams was a careful observer, not only of physical features but of gestures, movements and human interactions.
Claudia Jane Herington Williams was born in 1933 in Surrey to Frank Williams, a London-born civil servant, and Gladys Irene (née Herington), the daughter of a Leicestershire milliner and draper who established a successful department store bearing his name. Fabrics and patterns would feature in many of Williams’s paintings.
Because of financial difficulties, her parents relocated to the Llŷn Peninsula in north Wales shortly after the end of the Second
