‘To decorate life’

AN artist’s mission, wrote Frank Brangwyn in 1934, ‘is to decorate life’. More than any other artist of his generation, Brangwyn, who died in 1956, practised what he preached. ‘He must be able to turn his hand to everything… to make pots and pans, doors and walls, monuments or cathedrals, carve, paint and do everything asked of him,’ he suggested—and, in his own case, he did exactly that.

Brangwyn was prolific. He applied his talents to an extraordinary range of media, including ceramics for Royal Doulton and stained glass; he received commissions for book illustrations and, during the First World War, propaganda posters;