George Chapman was born in London and trained there at the Slade School of Fine Art and the Royal College of Art. His early influences included Sickert and the Euston Road School. However, a visit to the Rhondda in 1953 made a huge impression on him, and was to transform his vision of himself as an artist. His paintings of the Rhondda are now regarded as an important record of an industrial landscape and community that has all but disappeared.