30 Facts About Frank Brangwyn

Sir Frank William Brangwyn was a Welsh artist, painter, watercolourist, printmaker, illustrator and designer.

Frank Brangwyn received some artistic training, probably from his father, and later from Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo and in the workshops of William Morris, but he was largely an autodidact without a formal artistic education.

The murals for which Frank Brangwyn was famous, and during his lifetime he was very famous indeed, were brightly coloured and crowded with details of plants and animals, although they became flatter and less flamboyant later in his life.

Frank Brangwyn was born in Bruges, Belgium, where his father, William Curtis Brangwyn, moved after winning a competition organised by the Belgian Guild of St Thomas and St Luke to design a parish church.

William Curtis Frank Brangwyn had been born in Buckinghamshire to a Welsh family and married Eleanor Griffiths, who was from Brecon.

In 1874 the family moved back to the United Kingdom where William Curtis Frank Brangwyn established a successful design practice.

Frank Brangwyn attended Westminster City School but often played truant to spend time in his father's workshop or drawing in the South Kensington Museum.

At the age of seventeen, one of Frank Brangwyn's paintings was accepted and then sold to a shipowner, at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, which strengthened him in his conviction to become an artist.

Frank Brangwyn joined the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve and began painting seascapes.

Frank Brangwyn convinced the shipowner who had bought his Royal Academy picture to let him sail on a freighter to Istanbul.

Soon Frank Brangwyn was attracted by the light and the bright colours of these southern countries at a time when Orientalism was becoming a favoured theme for many painters.

Frank Brangwyn made many paintings and drawings, particularly of Spain, Egypt, Turkey and Morocco, which he visited in 1893.

In 1895, the Parisian art dealer Siegfried Bing commissioned Frank Brangwyn to decorate the exterior of his Galerie L'Art Nouveau, and encouraged Frank Brangwyn into new avenues: murals, tapestry, carpet designs, posters and designs for stained glass to be produced by Louis Comfort Tiffany.

Frank Brangwyn had an affair with Ellen Kate Chesterfield, which produced a son, James Barron Chesterfield-Frank Brangwyn, born 1885 in Mevagissey, Cornwall.

In 1896, Frank Brangwyn married Lucy Ray, a nurse, who died in 1924.

Frank Brangwyn was commissioned by his friend the artist Robert Hawthorn Kitson to design the dining room of Casa Cuseni, his house in Taormina, Sicily, built from 1902 to 1905.

Frank Brangwyn was responsible for the furniture, panelling, detailing and murals of the dining room.

In 1908 Frank Brangwyn was commissioned to paint the apse of St Aidan's Church, Leeds, but after it was realised that the air pollution would damage the paint, it was agreed he should work in glass mosaic.

Frank Brangwyn's etching, Canon Street Station, was presented in 1911 at the Leeds Art Gallery.

Frank Brangwyn's pupil was George Graham, President of the Society of Yorkshire Artists.

Frank Brangwyn donated most of these poster designs to charities such as the Red Cross, the Belgian and Allied Aid League, the Royal National Institute for the Blind and L'Orphelinat des Armees, an American charity supporting a French orphanage.

In 1917 Frank Brangwyn produced six lithographs under the title Making Sailors and one entitled The Freedom of the Seas for the Ministry of Information's Britain's Efforts and Ideals portfolio of images which were exhibited in Britain and abroad and were sold as prints to raise money for the war effort.

Frank Brangwyn was the Chairman of the English Committee for Diksmuide, near Ostend, a town that had been the site of heavy fighting throughout the war.

In 1926 Frank Brangwyn was commissioned by Lord Iveagh to paint a pair of large canvases for the Royal Gallery of the House of Lords at Westminster to commemorate those peers and their family members who had been killed in the war.

Frank Brangwyn painted two battle scenes which included life-size images of troops advancing into battle alongside a British tank.

Frank Brangwyn became increasingly pessimistic and a hypochondriac and began disposing of his possessions during the 1930s.

Frank Brangwyn donated many of his own and other artworks to museums and galleries in Britain and Europe including the British Museum and the William Morris Gallery.

Frank Brangwyn specified precisely where in the museum's Main Hall the works were to be hung and they remain there today.

Frank Brangwyn died there on 11 June 1956 and was buried in St Mary's Catholic Cemetery, Kensal Green.

In 1952 Clifford Musgrave estimated that Frank Brangwyn had produced over 12,000 works.