After 16 years and two million words David Buckman’s dictionary of homegrown artists is a ripping read, writes Dan Carrier

SITTING at a desk in plush offices in Piccadilly and pouring over oil industry production figures to cobble together stories for American business magazines was a way of life for financial journalist David Buckman.
His world was profit margins and politics, his spheres of interest the North Sea oil rigs, the Texan well heads and the Middle Eastern fields.
But, unknown to his pencil-pushing colleagues, he led a secret existence completely removed from producing analytical articles for businessmen.
During his lunch breaks, he would stroll through the streets around his office – and the end result of him taking some fresh air is a reference book containing more than two million words.
Mr Buckman, who lives in Ufton Grove in Islington, became fascinated by the art galleries and auction rooms of the area, and began to collate information about British artists.
It became an obsession. Sixteen years after he first thought of the idea, he is putting the finishing touches to a comprehensive biographical dictionary of every British artist who has exhibited since 1945.
With 14,000 meticulously recorded entries, his is the only dictionary of its kind – and the second volume, out this year, is set to become an instant bestseller.
Mr Buckman explains: “I don’t know why I became interested in collecting information on artists – it’s an indefinable thing: why do people take up stamp collecting? It’s the same with me.”
His business journalism background – and a time during National Service as a short hand clerk for RAF crash investigations – had instilled in him a love of note taking. And as he spent his lunch times sitting at the back of auctions where he had no interest in buying anything, he’d scribble down information on names, the prices their works went for, and collect the catalogues.
This pasttime started in the 1960s and by 1989 he collected so much information on contemporary British art he wondered what he should do with it.
But a dictionary did not automatically spring to mind.
He explains: “If you go to the Whitechapel Art Gallery, it has a notice saying there are 10,000 artists in the area. That’s enough to put you off doing a dictionary of them for life.”
But it soon became apparent that there was no book listing the who’s who of British art available, and Mr Buckman had the basis for one.
He says: “I did not know what I was letting myself in for. It’s been a real labour of love.”
So once he had decided to start the book, he roped friends in to help post a questionnaire to every artist he could find who had exhibited in Britain since 1945 – it was, he said, a massive undertaking.
He says: “I did my journalism during the day and then in the evenings I wrote up the entries. I decided it had to be as wide ranging as possible. I wanted every artist to be covered. That meant it had to include railway artists, motoring artists, aviation artists, poster artists – and all the fine arts too. I wanted still life, landscapes, portrait artists.”
But his eye for detail meant edition one took a lot longer than he originally thought.
He adds: “When I started I estimated it would be 7,500 entries and would take about six years.
“It took nine years of my spare time and rose to 10,500 entries.”
One reason was his quest for accuracy, a trait he says he picked up out of habit after writing financial journalism.
He explains: “It is extremely detailed. The watchword was to make it completely accurate as far as I could.”
And this meant becoming a detective.
Mr Buckman says: “Artists are not always totally accurate about their lives. I had to really chivvy them for information.”
This included checking birth certificates, which threw up a number of artists who had lopped years off their true ages, and exotic birth places which were fictitious and in one case writing 12 letters to confirm the year one artist died.”
Using a reporters nose, he even resorted to door stepping artists to make sure he was getting it right.
He says: “On one occasion I was chased out of a garden by a secretive, irate son with a saw.”
But he says it was worth it. “The most important thing is to collect the information when there is still information to be got,” he says. “Once it’s gone, it’s gone forever.”
And once the project was nearly completed, he then had the conundrum of what to do with it. He had not been commissioned by any publisher. He had written as a reference book, but had also gone to lengths to make sure each entry was interesting in its own right, which meant using anecdotes and stories about the artists and their works so people could browse through it. Although as a reference book it was a valuable resource, Mr Buckman wanted it to be a good read – and not just for history of art students.
He says: “I thought it should appeal to every one, not be full of dry facts – but that made writing the entries even harder.”
And he was so pleased with the results he decided to tout it around publishers – but the response was not encouraging.
He continues: “I went to the Arts Council to see if they could get some funding. They said I’d wasted my time and it had been done already – but they were talking rubbish.
“There were one or two other books out but they scarcely covered the area, and to make things worse, they were riddled with inaccuracies. They had some real howlers.”
The reason, Mr Buckman believes, is that they were done by art historians – not a financial journalist who had spent a life time producing copy that had to be 100 per cent accurate.
Other publishers were not encouraging – and it looked like he would keep it for himself until an old chum heard of the work.
Mr Buckman explains: “A friend I’d met when we did National Service together in the 1950s was running a small publishing company in Bristol that specialised in art books. I asked him if he was interested and he bravely said yes.
“We formed a company called Art Dictionary’s and our first run of a few thousand was sold out within three months.”
And now the updated second edition is nearly ready to hit the shops. With 14,000 entries and many advance copies ordered, Mr Buckman can rest “for a few years” – until the book needs updating again. He said: “I am constantly surprised by how many good artists there are working away who get little recognition. The art world is a lottery, who you know often being more important than how good you are. I hope my book helps ensure these talents are not forgotten.”

• The Dictionary of British Artists from 1945 is published in May by Art Dictionaries Ltd, priced £150. Contact 0117 973 7207 for details.