Celia Montague is a portrait and landscape painter based in Oxford and Venice. She graduated from St. Hugh's College, Oxford with an M.A. in Modern and Mediaeval Languages, then trained for and was called to the Bar. After a brief career as a barrister in London she left for drama school and became an actress. She worked widely on stage, television, film and audio books, while bringing up two sons, before training as a painter. Studies in life drawing over a number of years at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art in Oxford led to her taking the Portrait Diploma for painters at Heatherley's School of Fine Art in London, and then life painting for a further two years at the Prince's Drawing School.
As a landscape painter in England, she finds the motifs that inspire her by exploring in her painting van, from which she is able to paint in most weathers. Otherwise she may be found painting on a French hillside or a Venetian fondamenta, contending with the elements in the old tradition.
As a portrait painter she works mainly to commission. She has exhibited regularly in England since graduating from Heatherleys.
Solo exhibition:
2012 "Eden" at The Gallery, 54 Shepherd Market, London W1
Mixed exhibitions include:
2016 Mall Galleries, London SW1 (Lynn Painter-Stainers Prize)
2015/16 Fosse Gallery Christmas Exhibition
2015 Iona House Gallery, Woodstock Summer Collection
2015 Venice in Peril, Osborne Studio Gallery, London SW1
2014 20/21 British Art Fair, Royal College of Art
2014 AAF Battersea
2014 Cricket Fine Art, London SW10
2014 Chelsea Arts Club
2013/14 Fosse Gallery, Stow-on-the-Wold, Christmas Exhibition
2013 Browse and Darby, London W1, Summer exhibition 'Gallery Artists'
2013 Browse and Darby, London W1, Spring exhibition 'Gallery Artists'
2013 Fosse Gallery, Christmas Exhibition
2013 Fosse Gallery, Summer Exhibition
2013 Fosse Gallery, Spring Exhibition
2012 Fosse Gallery, Christmas Exhibition
2010/11/12/13 Swann Gallery, Woodstock, Oxon
2012 1 Essex Court, Temple, London EC4
2011 Oxford Town Hall
2011 Blackwell's Book Shop, Oxford
2011 St. Barnabas Church, Oxford
2009/10/11 Said Business School, Oxford
Her portrait of Colin Dexter, author of Inspector Morse, is on long term exhibition at The Randolph Hotel, Oxford, in the Morse Bar where the sitter himself is sometimes to be spotted…Her work is held in private collections around the world, in Britain, America, Bermuda and Singapore.