50s
Tom Phillips July 1955
David Rudkin Polyptych, 1964
The City, 1958 (Pembroke College)
- 1959
- Meets Jill Purdy, fellow member of Philharmonia Chorus while singing The Messiah under Beecham at Lucerne
- 1958
- Goes up to Oxford to study Anglo Saxon literature; spends much of time acting, doing theatre designs and making music
- Begins important friendship with David Rudkin whom he describes as "a vital intellectual stimulus"
- Attends Edgar Wind lectures on iconography in Renaissance Art and occasionally attends drawing class at Ruskin School
- Sells first painting The City to Pembroke College JCR for £12, exhibited at Ashmolean (alphabetically placed next to Picasso)
- 1957
- Application to Oxford University successful, gains a place at St Catherine’s Society
- Auditions for Philharmonia Chorus founded by Walter Legge, is accepted and sings on the recording of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the Philharmonia Orchestra under Otto Klemperer
- Draws during Albert Hall rehearsals with Wilhelm Pitts the chorus master of Bayreuth
- 1956
- Tom Phillips's father dies
- 1955
- London County Council Scholarship to Paris and Aix-en-Provence ("where I did a bad drawing of an apple in Cézanne’s Studio")
- 1954
- Exhibits paintings on the railings of the Embankment
- 1950
- On family holiday to Europe, Tom visits Uffizi, Louvre and Prado