Carel Weight was born in Paddington, London and studied at the Hammersmith School of Art from 1928 until 1930. In 1931 he moved to Goldsmiths College where the teaching allowed for more scope for imaginative compositions. He had his first solo exhibition in 1934 at the Cooling Galleries in Bond Street and he followed this by exhibiting at the Royal Academy and the Royal Society of British Artists. Much of his early work was destroyed by the bombing of his studio in the Second World War, during which he served as an official war artist, working in Italy, Greece and Austria. When he returned to London in 1947 he was offered a teaching post at the Royal College of Art, where he worked until his retirement in 1973.

Weight produced a mural for the Country Pavilion at the Festival of Britain in 1951 and became Professor of Painting at the Royal College of Art in 1957. He was awarded a CBE IN 1962, painted the mural Christ and the People for Manchester Cathedral the following year and was elected to the Royal Academy in 1965. He had a solo exhibition in the Academy in 1982 and, in the same year, he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Edinburgh University. Weight painted both landscapes and portraits, with much of his work infused with a mood of melancholia. Some of his paintings can be found in the Tate Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum.