Alfred Harris was born into a Jewish family in London in 1930 and trained at Willesden School of Art, then at the Royal College of Art (1952–55), alongside contemporaries including Frank Auerbach and Leon Kossoff. Harris’ early landscapes were exhibited at London galleries including the Drian, Beaux-Arts and the Ben Uri, where he showed frequently in the 1950s including a number of group shows, such as ‘Twelve Contemporary Artists’ (1958), alongside Auerbach and Jacob Bornfriend, among others, and a solo show of drawings in 1959. For seven years, beginning in the late sixties, Alfred Harris worked closely with Bornfriend and exhibited alongside him in seven major two-man shows in England, including at the Ben Uri in 1974, and as part of the Uppsala Arts Festival in Sweden. His works were also included in the 1963 exhibition entitled Eight Contemporary Artists, alongside Carol Burns, Harvey Daniels, Fred Feigl, Ben Levene, Fred Uhlman and Archibald Ziegler at Ben Uri Art Gallery, 14 Berners Street. Harris paid tribute to their creative friendship, declaring, ‘I know of no other person who was able to talk so simply and profoundly about art. I learned more from him than from all of my teachers’. A former member of the London Group and the Royal West of England Academy, Harris also chaired the Department of Art and Design Institute of Education (1963–88). His work is also held in collections in London, Oxford, Tel Aviv and Sweden. His ongoing series of searching self-portrait ‘studies’, including both paintings and drawings, has been at the centre of his practice for the last twelve years.