The Artwork of Sir Francis Cyril Rose
Born at the grand English estate of Moor Park, Hertfordshire in September of 1909, Sir Francis Cyril Rose, 4th Baronet of the Montreal Roses, was an English painter who received strong support throughout the 1930s from his patron, American novelist and art collector Gertrude Stein. Although he created many works of art, Rose’s artistic output was as erratic as his lifestyle was audacious and extravagant. Despite Stein’s endeavors to generate a sustained interest in his work, Francis Rose remained one of the more obscure artists of his generation.
Descended from Spanish nobility, Francis Rose inherited his British baronetcy while still a child. He received his initial education from the Jesuits at Beaumont College in Old Windsor, Berkshire, as well as lessons from private tutors abroad. In 1926 at the age of seventeen, Rose relocated to Paris where he resided as an expatriate until 1936. He studied under avant-garde painter and typographic artist Francis Picabia, an early figure in the Dada Movement, and Spanish muralist and theater set designer Josep Maria Sert.
In 1930, Rose had his first exhibition, alongside Salvador Dali, at the Paris gallery of modern art patron Marie Cuttoli. By this time, he had already designed costumes and scenery for Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballet Russe, some of which were in collaboration with artist Christopher Wood. Rose would design theater sets and costumes again in 1939 for Lord Berners’s ballet production “Cupid and Psyche” at London’s Sadler’s Wells Theater. During the 1930s, he spent several years studying Chinese poetry and art in China; he later traveled extensively in Europe and North Africa with his future wife, Frederica Dorothy Carrington.
While traveling in France in his early twenties, Francis Rose became a close acquaintance of author Gertrude Stein who helped launch his painting career by commissioning several of his works, including a portrait of herself, for her own art collection. Stein had discovered Rose’s paintings in a Parisian gallery in the late 1920s and eventually bought one hundred-thirty of his works. Through Stein’s support, Rose was able to exhibit his work in Paris, London and New York. He also created illustrations for “The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook”, a publication by Stein’s lifetime partner, Alice Babette Toklas. Although the friendship between the three personalities wavered at times, Alice Toklas asked Rose to design Gertrude Stein’s grave site memorial.
In 1938, Rose completed what is considered one of his most successful paintings, “L’Ensemble”, an oil on canvas mural that depicted his circle of friends which included Jean Cocteau, Gloria Stein, Alice Toklas, Christian Bérard, Pavel Tchelitchev and Natalie Barney, among others. This mural was exhibited in the following year at the Petit Palais Musée des Beauz Arts in Paris. Called to military service at the beginning of World War II, Rose served as a disciplinary sergeant in the Royal Air Force. In 1942, Francis Rose exhibited his work at the “Imaginative Art Since the War” exhibition held in London’s Leicester Galleries; this exhibition was organized by Frederica Dorothy Carrington, one of two daughters to Sir Frederick Carrington.
Francis Rose and Dorothy Carrington were married in 1942; however, as Rose was a noted homosexual, the marriage eventually ended. By 1954, Carrington had permanently settled, without Rose, on the Corsican island of Ajaccio; their divorce was finalized in 1966. Carrington became one of the twentieth-century’s leading scholars on the island’s culture and history. In 1971, she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and, in the next year, a member of the Royal Society of Literature. Carrington became a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in 1995.
In 1938, Rose gave an American stockbroker the power of attorney to manage his fortune; however, this stockbroker was involved in, and later convicted of, an embezzlement scheme. Rose lost most of his fortune and was nearly destitute by the end of the second World War. He spent his final years in a state of poverty, helped financially by friends foremost among whom was photographer Cecil Beaton. In an attempt to achieve some financial success, Rose published a memoir in 1961 entitled “Saying Life: The Memoirs of Sir Francis Rose”. This memoir discussed both his exploits, many which had factual issues, and his associations with the famous and artistic personalities of the time. “Saying Life”, however. was not the financial success that he needed.
Sir Francis Cyril Rose died in London on the nineteenth of November in 1979 at the age of seventy. He had exhibited in London and Paris in the 1950s and 1960s with major retrospective in London and Brighton in 1966. Another third retrospective of Rose’s work was given at London’s England & Co in 1988. In addition to private collections, his work is included in London’s England & Co Gallery, the Stein-Tolkas Collection of the Yale University Art Gallery, and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
Notes: The Nick Harvill Libraries has a biographical article with quotes entitled “Lord Chaos: The Life of Sir Francis Rose” at: https://www.nickharvilllibraries.com/blog/lord-chaos-the-life-of-sir-francis-rose
Time Magazine has an archive review of Sir Francis Roses’s July 1949 exhibition of new work at London’s Gimpel Fils Gallery. The review is located at; https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,888553,00.html
Top Insert Image: Cecil Beaton, “Sir Francis Rose”, Date Unknown, Bromide Print, The Cecil Beaton Studio Archive
Second Insert Image: Cecil Beaton, “Cecil Beaton, Gertrude Stein, Sir Francis Rose”, 1939, Bromide Print, 24 x 23.8 cm, National Portrait Gallery, London, England
Third Insert Image: Cecil Beaton, “Sir Francis Rose and Gertrude Stein, Bilignin”, 1939, Gelatin Silver Print from Original Negative, The Cecil Beaton Studio Archive
Bottom Insert Image: Francis Goodman, “Emma Tollemache and Sir Francis Rose”, 9 December 1947, Gelatin Silver Print from Original Negative, National Portrait Gallery, London, England
Emma Tollemache (née Manasseh) wrote the poetry collection “In the Light”. A limited edition of 250 copies with illustrations by Sir Francis Rose was published by Marlowe Galleries.