Philpot, Glyn

Philpot, Glyn (1884–1937). British painter and sculptor, born in London. He studied at Lambeth School of Art, 1900–3, and at the Académie Julian, Paris, 1905. In 1906 and 1910 he travelled in Spain and his early work was much influenced by Spanish art, particularly the sombre, dignified portraits of Velázquez. It was as a portraitist that Philpot had his main success, which was at its height in the 1920s. However, he also did a mural of Richard I Leaving England for the Crusades (1927) for St Stephen's Hall, Westminster, and had ambitions as a painter of allegories and religious subjects (he became a convert to Catholicism in 1905). Unlike his friend Oswald Birley, Philpot grew tired of routine fashionable portraiture (however lucrative it was) and in 1931 he moved to Paris for a year and started working in a more modern idiom—flatter and more stylized than his earlier manner: ‘The change has arisen from the conviction that new modes of expression are continually necessary if the artist is to add to the sum of beauty in the world … In my own case the change has been towards a simplification of technique … a simplification of form. Add to this a disregard for logical chiaroscuro, when this was found to hamper the sharper detachment of one plane from another, and this is all.’ The new style met with a mixed reception and some of Philpot's earlier admirers were dismayed: ‘Glyn Philpot “Goes Picasso”‘read a headline in the Scotsman on 30 April 1932. He died suddenly of heart failure in his London studio. The day after his funeral his friend and disciple Vivian Forbes (1891–1937) committed suicide; his behaviour had been unbalanced for several years. Philpot was out of fashion for many years, but his reputation began to revive in the 1970s (coinciding with a general renewal of interest in the Art Deco style, of which he is sometimes said to be a representative) and there was a major exhibition of his work at the National Portrait Gallery, London, in 1984–5. He is now perhaps best known for his portraits of negroes—his West Indian servant Henry Thomas was a favourite model.