Born London in 1915 into the wealthy family of Peak Frean's Biscuits. Initially Carr studied History at Oxford, before deciding to study art under Cedric Morris at Dedham together with fellow students Lucien Freud.
His friendship with the two Roberts, MacBryde and Colquhoun, in particular the latter, led to a change in his style, and throughout the fifties he painted a series of remarkable canvases in which he explored one of the twentieth-century's dominant themes, the uneasy relationship between man and machine.
During the 50's and 60's he befriended and worked with Prunella Clough, exhibiting with her at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1953, Southampton University in 1964 and the Barbican in 1988. A retrospective exhibition at the Mayor Gallery in 1987 was a tribute to a gifted painter.