Brangwyn, Sir Frank

Brangwyn, Sir Frank (1867–1956). British painter, graphic artist, and designer, born in Bruges, the son of a Welsh architect who specialized in church furnishings. The family returned to Britain in 1875 and from 1882 to 1884 Brangywn was apprenticed to the great designer-craftsman William Morris, after which he travelled the world for several years before settling in London. He considered himself self-taught as a painter, but he was influenced by Morris's romantic medievalism and like his master was active in a wide variety of fields. He was an Official War Artist in the First World War, for example, he was a skilful etcher and lithographer, and he made designs for a great range of objects (furniture, textiles, ceramics, glassware, jewellery, and so on), but he became best known as a mural painter. This was his main field of activity from 1902 (when he began his first such commission, for Skinners' Hall, London: scenes relating to the fur trade) to 1937 (when he completed further work in the same building). During the First World War he took up temporary residence in Ditchling, Sussex, and in 1924 he settled there permanently, his large studio providing space for even his biggest works. His most important commission was a series of 18 panels on the theme of the British Empire for the House of Lords. They were begun in 1924 and rejected as too flamboyant for their setting in 1930, a decision that caused great controversy. Offers for the panels came from all over the world, and in 1934 they were installed in the Guildhall in Swansea in a specially constructed room named after the artist. His other mural commissions included several from the USA, for example at the Rockefeller Center, New York (1930–5), where he replaced a work by Rivera that was found politically unacceptable. His work at its most characteristic was floridly coloured, crowded with detail and incident, and rather Rubensian, although it became somewhat flatter, lighter, and more stylized later in his career. From middle age he suffered a good deal of ill-health, but he lived to be 89 and remained highly prolific. In old age he became something of a recluse.

During his lifetime Brangwyn was one of the most famous of British artists (probably the most famous worldwide). In 1952 he was given a retrospective exhibition at the Royal Academy, the first time a living Academician had been so honoured, and it was commonplace to hear him compared with the great masters of the past. His reputation on the Continent stood extremely high; he received many awards from foreign academies and in 1936 was made an honorary citizen of Bruges to mark his gift of a large collection of his work to found the Brangwyn Museum there. He made a similar gift to the Musée de la Ville at Orange in France in 1947, and he is also well represented in the William Morris Gallery, Walthamstow, to which he donated his art collection as well as many of his own works. Since his death his huge reputation has crumbled. He was a prodigiously hard worker and one of the finest draughtsmen of his time, but his paintings now tend to be dismissed as facile and sentimental.