Dubbed the “painter laureate of the car,” Harold Cleworth is one of the most respected and well-known automotive artists in the world. Born in the north of England at the end of the 1930s, Cleworth's home today is in California where he moved to in 1972. The move came as Cleworth grew tired of London where had lived since graduating from the Manchester College of Art in 1967. In California Harold Cleworth began his career in earnest, painting the automobiles which had been his passion since childhood. Cleworth's "breakthrough" came when San Francisco car dealer Richard Rubin, asked him to paint a portrait of his black Mercedes Gullwing. This portrait with its signature gullwing doors open, became the most sought after automotive image of the day.