Maxwell Ashby Armfield was an English artist, illustrator and writer. Born to a Quaker family in Ringwood, Hampshire, Armfield was admitted to Birmingham School of Art, then under the headmastership of Edward R. Taylor and established as a major centre of the Arts and Crafts Movement. There he studied under Henry Payne and Arthur Gaskin and, outside the school, received instruction in tempera painting from Joseph Southall at Southall's studio in Edgbaston.
Leaving Birmingham in 1902, he moved to Paris to study at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière under Gustave Courtois and René Menard, where he became an associate of Gaston Lachaise, Keith Henderson, and Norman Wilkinson.
In 1909 he married the author and playwright Constance Smedley and, like many with connections to the Arts and Crafts Movement in Birmingham, settled in the Cotswolds. The couple became close collaborators: working together to combine design, illustration, text and theatre.
From 1915 the couple spent seven years in the United States. Armfield has paintings in the collection of several British institutions including Derby Art Gallery, Southampton and Nottingham Gallery and the Russell-Cotes Art Gallery.
(source: wikipedia)