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for Sir Frank Brangwyn
Sir Frank Brangwyn
British, 1867 - 1956
English painter and graphic artist. Largely self-taught, he helped his father, William Brangwyn, who was an ecclesiastical architect and textile designer in Bruges. After his family moved to England in 1875 Brangwyn entered the South Kensington Art Schools and from 1882 to 1884 worked for William Morris. Harold Rathbone and Arthur Mackmurdo encouraged him to copy Raphael and Donatello in the Victoria and Albert Museum, complementing his already broad knowledge of Dutch and Flemish art.
Brangwyn’s plein-air work in Cornwall from 1884 to 1888 resulted in a series of oils, exhibited at the Royal Academy and the Royal Society of British Artists, London, in which the subdued tones indicate the influences of Whistler and the Newlyn school. Journeys to the Near East, South Africa and Europe in the early 1890s, and contact with Arthur Melville, encouraged the use of a brighter palette in exotic subjects such as the Slave Market (1892; Southport, Atkinson A.G.). He held his first one-man exhibition in 1891, and the success of his Buccaneers (St Louis, MO, George Washington U. Gal. A.) at the Paris Salon in 1893 was the beginning of an international reputation that continued throughout his career, particularly in Europe and the USA. He visited Venice in 1896 and was greatly excited by its pageantry and by the art of Titian and Veronese. These were the sources, with Delacroix, the European Symbolists, Dutch and French Realists, William Morris and the Pre-Raphaelites, that shaped his mature style in oils and murals.
In 1895, at the same time as he was establishing his reputation as an illustrator, Brangwyn received his first decorative commission, for Siegfried Bing’s Maison de l’Art Nouveau in Paris. His first major British mural commission was the series of historical panels (1901–9; in situ) for Skinners’ Hall in London . These synthesize keen observation from nature with inspiration from past and present art in a highly integrated symbolic and decorative ensemble, expressing his philosophy of art as the means to unite Man, God and Creation. The first panel, Departure of Sir James Lancaster for the East Indies, won his election as ARA in 1904 and, with his Modern Commerce panel (1900–06) at the Royal Exchange, London, led to many subsequent mural commissions in Britain and abroad. These included the scenes of contemporary industry and life for the Venice Biennales of 1905 and 1907 (1905 panels now in Leeds, C.A.G.) and for Lloyd’s Register of Shipping (1908–14; destr.), London; historical murals for the Cuyahoga County Court House (1912), Cleveland, OH, and the State Capitol (1915), Jefferson City, MO; and work at Christ’s Hospital (1912–23), Horsham, and St Aidan’s Church (1909–16), Leeds.
The earthquake of 1910 in Messina, Sicily, inspired a notable series of watercolours, while in etching, which he had begun in 1904, he evolved a monumental style using strong chiaroscuro. Industry, shipping and contemporary London and Venice were favourite themes, as in S Maria della Salute (1908; see Gaunt, pl. 118). Work in other media included still-lifes and paintings in oil, such as the Rajah’s Birthday (1908; Leeds, C.A.G.) and The Swans (c. 1924; London, William Morris Gal.), lithographs, war posters, and pageant, scenery and architectural designs.
From 1924 Brangwyn was occupied with what he regarded as the culmination of his life’s work, the commission from Edward Guinness, 1st Earl of Iveagh, for panels for the Royal Gallery in the House of Lords, Houses of Parliament, London, to form part of the Peers’ War Memorial. These illustrated British Empire themes but were rejected by the Lords as being too flamboyant for their setting. On completion in 1933 they were purchased for the Guildhall, Swansea: they are still in situ.
Brangwyn was elected RA in 1919 and became President of the Society of Graphic Artists in 1921, having served as President of the Royal Society of British Artists (1913–18). After his murals of 1930–34 for the Rockefeller Center, New York, he devoted himself to religious art (e.g. the Stations of the Cross; from 1935; lithographs made for locations including Campion Hall, Oxford, where examples remain, and the monastery of St André (Zeven-kerken), near Bruges), some furniture and ceramic designs, the creation of a museum for his work at Bruges and the donation of collections of his work to museums at Walthamstow, near London, and Orange, France, among others. He was knighted in 1941. Brangwyn paid little regard to contemporary developments in art and in his later years lived virtually as a recluse at Ditchling, where he had settled in 1918.
Clare A. P. Willsdon. "Brangwyn, Frank." In Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/grove/art/T010930 (accessed May 1, 2012).
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