Cecil Collins; Mystical, Romantic Artist

Cecil Collins, 81, an English artist who painted in the mystical, romantic tradition. Collins painted haunting images of people and landscapes resembling 19th-Century works of William Blake and Samuel Palmer. The idea of a lost paradise--a favorite theme of English art in the 1940s--was strong in his work and he was critical of modern society based on industry, technology and materialism, calling it “spiritual betrayal.” As a teacher at Britain’s Central School of Art from 1951, Collins encouraged his students to express themselves physically and spiritually, encouraging them to draw with both hands at once, with their feet and lying down. His book, “The Vision of the Fool,” in which he exalted the artist, was widely read and quoted among students in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s. Collins was elected a member of the Royal Academy of Arts last year. In London on Sunday of unreported causes.