John Arthur Malcolm Aldridge, painter, printmaker, draftsman, wallpaper and textile designer, and art teacher, was born on 26 July 1905 in Woolwich, London. He was educated at Uppingham School and became a classical scholar at Corpus Christi, Oxford. Despite being self-taught as an artist, Aldridge had a distinguished career as a painter and he taught at the Slade School of Fine Art, the art school of the University College London, between 1949 and 1970.

Aldridge associated with the Seven and Five Society and, invited by Ben Nicholson, he first exhibited with the group at the Leicester Galleries in central London in 1931. Two years later he held his first solo exhibition at the same gallery.

In 1933, Aldridge moved to the village of Great Bardfield in north Essex. He derived much of the imagery for his paintings from the surrounding landscape and he became associated with the East Anglian painters, such as John Nash, Cedric Morris and Edward Bawden, with whom he designed wallpapers, as Barfield Wallpapers, beginning in 1938.

Aldridge was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1954 and elevated to a Royal Academician in 1963. His work is represented in the collections of the National Portrait Gallery and the National Gallery in London.

John Arthur Malcolm Aldridge died on 3 May 1983 in Great Bardfield, England.