Angus McBean

The Photography of Angus McBean

Born in the Monmouthshire city of Newbridge on the eighth of June in 1904, Angus Rowland McBean was a Welsh photographer and set designer associated with the Surrealist movement. He went through two main creative periods in his forty-year career: pre-World War II in which he experimented successfully with surrealist images and post-war when his portraiture photography became more conventional and focused on theatrical and entertainment artists.

Angus McBean was the eldest and only son of Clement McBean, of Scottish descent, and Irene Sara Thomas, of Welsh descent. His father, after his military career in the South Wale Borderers, became a surveyor in the mining industry which necessitated frequently moving his family. McBean had his primary education at the Monmouth School for Boys and later attended the Newport Technical College where he developed an interest in photography. At the age of fifteen, McBean bought his first camera and created sets, props and costumes for the amateur dramatic productions at Monmouth’s Lyceum Theater.

In 1925, McBean’s father died from tuberculosis which he had contracted while fighting in the trenches during World War I. After his fathers death, McBean relocated to London where he worked in the antiques department of Liberty’s, London’s luxury department store on Regent Street. In his free time, McBean engaged in photographing his friends, making masks, and attending theater performances in the West End. He left Liberty’s in 1931, grew a distinctive beard, and began a career in photography. McBean served as an apprentice at the New Grafton Street Studio owned by photographer Hugh Cecil who taught him photographic techniques. After a year, McBean established his own studio on Belgrave Road in Victoria, London.

The turning point in Angus McBean’s career came in 1935 when Welsh actor and dramatist Ivor Novello asked him to create masks for playwright Clemence Dane’s adaption of author Max Beerbohm’s “The Happy Hypocrite”. Pleased with the masks, Novello commissioned McBean to take portrait photographs for the production. In 1937, McBean received a commission from the British weekly illustrated journal “The Sketch” for a photograph of actress Beatrix Lehmann in Eugene O’Neill’s “Mourning Becomes Electra”. This portrait was inspired by the surrealist art of the era. McBean, in collaboration with artist Roy Hobdell, produced a series of surrealist-styled portraits of leading actresses for a weekly series which ran until the beginning of World War II.

After the war, McBean established a new studio on Endell Street in London. One of his first commissions was to photograph the American actress Clare Luce who was appearing in “Anthony and Cleopatra” at Stratford-on-Avon’s Shakespeare Memorial Theater. McBean next produced a series of portraits that incorporated notable objects from the lives of his sitters: Ivor Novello is shown with bound editions of his musicals and Cecil Beaton is surrounded by pages from his scrapbooks. In the 1940s and 1950s, he was the most important photographer of theater and dance personalities. Among his many sitters were Audrey Hepburn, Marlene Dietrich, Noel Coward, Mae West, Katharine Hepburn, Margot Forteyn and Robert Helpmann.

Angus McBean’s career took a new direction in the 1950s and 1960s as he began shooting color photographs for album covers. He photographed Cliff Richard and the Shadows, Shirley Bassey and the Beverley Sisters, and Spike Mulligan for his album “Milligan Preserved”. McBean also was responsible for the 1963 cover art of The Beatles album “Please, Please Me” which showed the group leaning over the balcony at the EMI offices in London. Six years later, he was to recreate the shot for the the proposed “Get Back” album; however, the recreated shot later appeared on the two retrospectives of the group’s work “1962-1966” and “1967-1970”.

In the 1960s, McBean purchased Flemings Hall in Bedingfield, Suffolk and undertook a major renovation project; this estate would be his home until his death. In this period, he gradually reduced the number of commissions he accepted but continued to work on selected projects. In 1984, McBean appeared as a special guest in musician-composer David Sylvian’s music video “Red Guitar”. Sylvian, who has a strong interest in McBean’s work, was directly inspired by McBean’s 1938 surrealistic portrait of cinema and theatrical actress Flora Robson.

Over the course of his career, Angus McBean produced two hundred and eighty portrait photographs; he was also produced seventy-nine self portraits. In 1990, McBean fell ill on a holiday in Morocco and, after returning to England, died at Ipswich Heath Road Hospital on the 9th of June in 1990, eighty-six years after his birth. His work is in many private and public collections including London’s National Portrait Gallery, the Mander & Mitchenson Collection at the University of Bristol Theatre Collection, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Royal National Theater Archive, and the Shakespeare Center Library and Archive in Stratford-on-Avon.

Note: In the spring of 1942, Angus McBean’s career was temporarily ruined when he was arrested in the city of Bath for criminal acts of homosexuality. He was sentenced to four years in prison; however he was released in the autumn of 1944. After the end of the second World War, McBean was able to successfully resume his career. In the late 1940s, he formed a close, yet brief, relationship with male model Sebastian Minton. McBean helped Minton, who had ambitions of becoming an actor, put together a photographic portfolio for studio presentations.

Note: If anyone knows the identity of the actress in the fourth photo of the header photo array, please send me that information via the contact page. Thank you.

Top Insert Image: Angus McBeam, “Self Portrait”, circa 1951, Bromide Print, 29.4 x 26 cm, National Portrait Gallery, London

Second Insert Image: Angus McBean, “Surrealist Beach Scene with a Male Figure”, circa 1949, Hand-Colored Silver Print, 50.5 x 67.0 cm, Private Collection

Third Insert Image: Angus McBean, “Vivien Leigh ‘Twelfth Night’ Old Vic Tour”, 1961, Bromide Print, Private Collection

Fourth Insert Image: Angus McBean, “Choreographer and Dancer Berto Pasuko”, 1947, Gelatin Silver Print, 37.5 x 28.6 cm, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: Angus McBean, “Binkie Beaumont, Angela Baddeley and Emlyn Williams”, 1947, Bromide Print, 38 x 29.7 cm, Harvard Theater Collection, Harvard University, National Portrait Gallery

Valerie Ganz

Valerie Ganz, Three Paintings from the “Shower” Series

Valerie Ganz was born in Swansea, South Wales, United Kingdom, overlooking the dramatic sweep of Swansea Bay with its background of heavy industry. She attended Swansea College of Art and studied painting, sculpture and stained glass. Ganz remained as a tutor until 1973 when she turned her attention to painting full time.

As Valerie Ganz’a interest in the landscape of South Wales grew, her attention was drawn to the landscape of its industrial areas and, in particular, to its mining industry. Over a period of many years, Ganz worked at fourteen different collieries, taking a house and studio in 1985 at Six Bells, Abertillery.

For a year Ganz worked at the Six Bells Colliery, alongside the miners both above ground and at the coalface. In the evening she made studies of the miners and their families at choir practice, in the snooker halls and in the chapel. This work formed the basis of the mining exhibition in 1986 at the Glynn Vivian Gallery in Swansea. The exhibition was entitled “Mining in Art”; her work was shown along with the works of fellow artists Josef Herman, Jack Crabtree and Nicholas Evans.

David Nash

David Nash, “Ash Dome”, 1977, Circle of Ash Trees, Wales

In 1977, sculptor David Nash cleared an area of land near his home in Wales where he trained a circle of 22 ash trees to grow in a vortex-like shape for an artwork titled “Ash Dome”. Over 40 years later, the trees still grow today. The artist has long worked with wood and natural elements in his art practice, often incorporating live trees or even animals into pieces. The exact site of “Ash Dome” in the Snowdonia region of northwest Wales is a closely guarded secret,

“When I first planted the ring of trees for Ash Dome, the Cold War was still a threat. There was serious economic gloom, very high unemployment in our country, and nuclear war was a real possibility… To make a gesture by planting something for the 21st century, which was what Ash Dome was about, was a long-term commitment, an act of faith.“ – David Nash, 2001

Gwrych Castle

Gwrych Castle near Abergele in North Wales

Local history claims that the first castle at Gwrych was built by the Normans in the 12th century. It was seized by the Welsh prince Rhys ap Gruffydd of Deheubarth in about 1170 who then rebuilt the timber castle in stone. This castle was later destroyed by Cromwell’s army following the English Civil War of the mid-17th century.

The later castle at Gwrych was begun in 1819. The castle is a Grade 1 listed building set in a wooded hillside over looking the Irish Sea. It was the first Gothic folly to be built in Europe by a wealthy industrialist Lloyd Hesketh. Bamford Hesketh, his son, inherited the title of Gwrych in his early 20s and used his vast fortune to build the 4,000-acre Gwrych Castle Estate.

The castle once had a total of 128 rooms including the outbuildings: twenty-eight bedrooms, an outer hall, an inner hall, two smoke rooms, a dining room, a drawing room, a billiards room, an oak study, and a range of accommodations for servants. There are nineteen embattled towers and the whole facade is over 2000 yards. Many feel the castle’s outstanding feature was the castle’s 52-step marble staircase.

Colin See-Paynton

Colin See-Paynton, “The Hare and Moonshadows”, Woodcut, Edition of 75, 12.7 x 17.8 cm, Private Collection

In 1972, See-Paynton moved to a remote farmhouse in Wales, on to which he built his studio. Entirely self-taught as an engraver, he began to make prints in 1980 and has since produced over 250 editions.

Colin has brought a new vitality to one of the earliest forms of printmaking- woodcuts. Although his work is based on the meticulous observation of the natural world, his talent is to invent compositions which distil the ecological and behavioural relationships of the species and their habitats.

He uses his knowledge and imagination to construct engravings of great complexity and refinement and has evolved something new by the patterning and layering of his images. Later compositions, particularly those from an underwater viewpoint, use an increasingly abstract and fluid line to capture the fast and fleeting movements of birds and fish.

Frank Brangwyn

Frank Brangwyn, “The Blacksmiths”, One of Four Panels, Oil on Board, Gallery of Leeds

Frank Brangwyn was an Anglo-Welsh artist, painter, and progressive designer. As well as paintings and drawings, he produced designs for stained glass, furniture, ceramics, glassware, buildings and interiors. He received some training from his father, and later from Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo and in the workshops of William Morris. However, he was largely an autodidact without a formal artistic education.

This panel is from the decorations that Frank Brangwyn carried out in the Venice International Exhibition of 1905. He designed the whole scheme in the British section, including its woodwork and its furniture. There were four large oblong panels and two smaller ones, representing forms of present-day labour — potters, navvies, smiths, and workers in steel. It was hoped in Venice that these decorations would remain permanently there, in the Municipal Gallery: however, an English patron of art, Mr. S. Wilson, purchased them for the City Art Gallery of Leeds. A fifth panel “Weavers” was commissioned to bear them company in the Brangwyn room.

The group of the smiths is perhaps the finest of the four original panels. Here the scheme of lighting is reversed, and the two foreground figures stand out in the warm, golden light from the forge, while the two on the opposite side of the anvil sink into a greyish-blue shadow. A strong note of blue is seen in the glimpse of the afternoon summer sky which one gets through the opening beyond.

Reblogged with thanks to a great art site: http://monsieurlabette.tumblr.com

Phil Greenwood

Phil Greenwood, “Morning Moon”, 1973, Lithograph, 40 x 47 cm, Private Collection

Phil Greenwood was born in Dolgellau, Wales, and studied at the Hornsey and Harrow Colleges of Art. He was taught by some of Britain’s finest contemporary artists – Ken Howard RA, Charles Bartlett RE, RWS and the late Christopher Saunders RA. After an initial career in teaching he became a full time printmaker in 1971 and has been exhibiting both nationally and internationally for the past forty years. He is widely acknowledged as one of the countries leading printmakers.

Phil’s extraordinary ability to capture and convey the atmosphere of a landscape is fundamental to his work. His economical use of colour is heavily belied by rich and vibrant pieces that are exquisitely designed. With quiet mystery he is able to portray both the complexity and simplicity of natures double-edged personality and beauty.

With work hanging in many private and public collections through out the world Phil regularly exhibits at the Royal Academy and the Bankside Gallery. He has also exhibited work at the British Embassy in Brussels, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Tate Gallery, London.