22 Facts About Edward Bawden

Edward Bawden was a fine watercolour painter but worked in many different media.

Edward Bawden illustrated several books and painted murals in both the 1930s and 1960s.

Edward Bawden was admired by Edward Gorey, David Gentleman and other graphic artists, and his work and career is often associated with that of his contemporary Eric Ravilious.

Edward Bawden was married to the potter and artist, Charlotte Bawden.

Edward Bawden was born on 10 March 1903 at Braintree, Essex, the only child of Edward Bawden, an ironmonger, and Eleanor Bawden.

In 1932, Edward Bawden married Charlotte Epton, a successful potter, who had been a fellow-student at the Royal College.

At first the couple lived in a flat in Hammersmith, but soon moved to a Georgian house in Great Bardfield, Essex, only a few miles from Braintree, where Edward Bawden had been born.

Edward Bawden held an exhibition of his Essex watercolours at the Zwemmer Gallery in 1934, and another show of his paintings was held at the Leicester Galleries in 1938.

In 1938, Edward Bawden collaborated with John Aldridge, who lived in the village, on a range of wallpapers that they intended to be printed commercially, but from lino blocks handcut by the designers.

Edward Bawden was posted to North Africa as a War Office Artist on a full-time War Artists' Advisory Committee contract.

Edward Bawden painted landscapes and portraits in Libya, Sudan, Cairo, Eritrea and Ethiopia, reaching Addis Ababa in May 1941.

Edward Bawden departed Cairo aboard the SS Stratheden but transferred to the RMS Laconia in Durban on 27 August 1942.

Edward Bawden was held prisoner in a Vichy internment camp in Casablanca for two months before the camp was liberated by American troops.

When he eventually returned to Britain, Edward Bawden did portrait work at the Military Hospital in Colchester and in Scotland, with Polish forces training there.

Edward Bawden returned to Iraq in September 1943, as a Ministry of Information artist to work in Baghdad and Kurdistan, before he joined the Middle East Anti-Locust Unit on its trek to Jeddah.

Edward Bawden returned to England in 1944 and for a short while, painted at Southampton Docks before departing for Yugoslavia, by way of Rome.

Edward Bawden lived in Great Bardfield, Essex from the 1930s to 1970.

Edward Bawden's notable surviving public works include a tile depicting a foot ferry on the River Lea, commissioned by London Underground and located on the Victoria line platform at Tottenham Hale tube station.

Edward Bawden produced the cameo-like silhouette of Queen Victoria located at Victoria tube station.

The original Morley College mural that Edward Bawden created in the 1930s was destroyed during a wartime bombing raid; however the rebuilt and relocated college on the South Bank contains a fine surviving mural by him.

In 1965 Edward Bawden completed a mural for Queen's University, Belfast and his last major commission, completed in 1972, was for an historical mural inside Blackwell's bookshop in Oxford.

In 1969 Edward Bawden became a Senior Part-Time Lecturer in Graphics at the City of Leicester Polytechnic.