Hyman Segal was born in London in 1914 and attended the Jew’s Free School (known today as JFS) in Camden Town, London. The JFS website notes: “Not only is Hyman Segal an artist of genius, but he is an outstanding personality. He is fighting a long battle against race bias, particularly the color bar. He became blind at the age of nine, regained his sight, and eventually won the JFS Raphael Tuck Scholarship under the tuition of Mr. S. Polak.
At the age of 12, he won a scholarship to study at St. Martin’s School of Art, where other students included Leon Underwood and Vivian Pitchforth, and his artistic career broadened to include painting, sculpture, and design. He was a member of he Royal Society of British Artists and National Registered Designer. In 1935, he was commissioned by London Transport to design a series of posters.
In 1946, on his return from war service in Africa, he joined the St. Ives Society of Arists, of which he was a committee member. In 1949, he was one of the founding members of the Penwith Society of Artists. He worked from 10 Porrthmeor Studios and became known locally for his black and white drawings of people, fisherman, and cats. He did live for a time in St. Agnes, and for a while he provided art therapy for TB patients at Tehidy Sanatorium,. His caricatures of pub-goers in St. Agnes, drawn in the 1950s, were exhibited at the St. Agnes Museum in 2012 and copies of his famous caricatures St. Ives locals can still be seen in The Sloop Inn.
He died in December 2004 at the Edward Hain Hospital, St. Ives, aged 90.
