1903

Born 3rd October at 263 Albert Cuyp Straat, Amsterdam.
Christened Albertus Johannes Houthuesen.

1911

Father dies on 5th November.

1912

Moves to London with mother, sister, and two brothers. Mother sets up a boarding house at 20 Constantine Rd, Hampstead.  Albert attends Fleet Rd Elementary School.

1917-23

Already delivering groceries after school and on Saturdays when he leaves school in 1917. Begins evening classes at St Martin's School of Art.  Visits the great London museums.  Becomes a full-time grocer's assistant; then a lens grinder, apprentice engraver, tailor's stencil cutter, furniture restorer; and designer of lettering on architectural stones.

Shares a studio in Howland Street with Barnett Freedman, Gerry Ososki and Reginald Brill, fellow students at St Martin's

First of three brief visits to Holland.

First attempt at the Royal College of Art scholarship.  Becomes a naturalized British citizen.

Second scholarship attempt.

Awarded an £80 annual scholarship to the Royal College of Art.  Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Edward Burra, Ceri Richard and Cecil Collins are among his fellow students.

For diploma, paints Supper at Emmaus which Cecil Collins later said 'Touched a mystical stream, a manifestation of a higher form of consciousness.'
Meets Catherine Dean in the autumn.

Stays on at College as a student demonstrator.  Leaves on 20th July and takes up a poorly paid evening teaching post at the Mary Ward Settlement Working Men's College.  Spends a fortnight in the Cotswolds

Evening classes pay a pittance.
Undertakes the first of his commissions for the Duke of Bedford (again in 1933, 1936, 1937 and 1938.  Sees the Diaghilev Ballet 'Le Tricorne' with the original Picasso sets and costumes.
Catherine leave the Royal College of Art and takes a teaching post in Manchester.  Albert remains in London, staying the the Rothensteins before moving back to Constantine Rd.

Catherine (with an annual salary of £130) takes Albert and her mother for a fortnight's holiday in the Lake District.

Albert and Catherine marry on 3rd October. And rent rooms at 20 Abbey Gardens, St John's Wood.

The first of many sojourns in the mining village of Trelogan, North Wales.  Also visits Devon and Sussex and paints his first seascapes.

Catherine suffers a miscarriage.

Albert is very ill with a duodenal ulcer.

Begins work on the Duchess of Bedford's memorial window (completed in 1938).

Move to studio flat in 37b Greville Rd, St John's Wood.

Bombing badly damages their home.  Damp subsequently destroys over forty paintings placed in war-time storage.  Albert is rejected by the army on health grounds.  And becomes a tracer at the London North East Railway draftsmen's office in Doncaster.

His 'war work' leads to a severe nervous breakdown.  Meets the Hermans, a family of Russian Jewish musical clowns and makes his first clown drawngs.

Returns penniless to London in July.  And becomes a warden at a student hostel in the Elephant and Castle.  Received first treatment for high blood-pressure.  Visits the ballet many times.

Last stay in Wales.

Autumn move to Stone Hall, Oxted in Surrey.

Moves to first (and last) homes, in Love Walk, Camberwell, southeast London

First one-man exhibition, in May, at the Reid Gallery, London.
Has operation in June

Second exhibition at Reids

Victor Waddington bebomes his representative.

Mother dies, aged ninety-two.

Represented by the Mercury Gallery who hold third exhibition.
Albert and Richard Nathanson begin their conversations.

Richard Nathanson becomes Albert's representative and, over the next five years, arranges seven exhibitions of his work.

BBC broadcast the documentary Walk to the Moon on Albert's life and work.

Albert dies at home on 20th October.