British Murals

The murals produced in Britain in the twentieth century remain one of the great inventive achievements of modern British art.

In spite of this they represent an area of research that has been much neglected. Liss Llewellyn have played a central role in encouraging new research and the commissioning of photography to help record a unique part of British heritage which remains today at risk.

Highly original in their approach to design, balancing varying degrees of modernity or tradition, murals demonstrate the creative drive of their makers and contain singular expressions of the aesthetic, personal and social concerns that typify the ages from which they come. Some were celebrations of simple human pleasures, perhaps to decorate a refreshment room, an ocean liner or a dining room. Others were intended to be the highest expressions of their art, ambitious allegorical or decorative compositions that like the frescoes of the Renaissance would speak through the ages to later generations. The individuals and committees who commissioned them similarly believed they would both represent the best that Britain had to offer and mark the high accomplishment of contemporary society, elevating the public and private spaces they occupied and inspiring moral purpose.

  • Claude-Francis-Barry: The-Heart-of-the-Empire:-Our-Finest-Hour,-1940
    Claude Francis Barry: The Heart of the Empire: Our Finest Hour, 1940
  • Sir-Thomas-Monnington: Study-for-‘The-Fifth-Station,-The-Cross-is-laid-upon-Simon-of-Cyrene’,-circa-1960
    Sir Thomas Monnington: Study for ‘The Fifth Station, The Cross is laid upon Simon of Cyrene’, circa 1960
  • Frank-Brangwyn: The-Printed-Word-Makes-the-People-of-the-World-One,-mural-for-the-entrance-hall-of-Odham-Press,-London,-1935-36
    Frank Brangwyn: The Printed Word Makes the People of the World One, mural for the entrance hall of Odham Press, London, 1935-36
  • Sir-Thomas-Monnington: Design-for-Students’-Union,-University-of-London,-circa-1969
    Sir Thomas Monnington: Design for Students’ Union, University of London, circa 1969
  • Barbara-Jones: Man-at-Work-–-A-Century-of-Technical-and-Social-Progress,-1961
    Barbara Jones: Man at Work – A Century of Technical and Social Progress, 1961
  • John-Cecil-Stephenson: Study-for-Fugue,-1953
    John Cecil Stephenson: Study for Fugue, 1953
  • Frank-Brangwyn: Study-for-Man-the-Creator,-circa-1932
    Frank Brangwyn: Study for Man the Creator, circa 1932
 

Catalogues with British Murals

Kenneth Rowntree
A Centenary Exhibition


Published: March 2015
128 pages, +125 colour illustrations
ISBN: 978-0-9930884-1

Nominated for the William MB Berger Prize for British Art History.

Kenneth Rowntree has always been highly regarded by those familiar with his work. The essays in this catalogue, which embrace new research and scholarship, reveal him to be an artist of great scope and variety. His early work reflects the inspiration and creative dialogue that came out of his friendship with Eric Ravilious (1903–1942) on account of whom Rowntree moved to Great Bardfield during the 1940s. During this period he was particularly preoccupied with Kenneth Clark’s Recording Britain project…. At the end of the war he joined the teaching staff at the Royal College of Art. In 1951 he was commissioned to undertake murals for the Lion and Unicorn Pavilion for the Festival of Britain. As Professor of Fine Art in Newcastle (1959–1980) he was at the epicentre of an important northern school of modernism that revolved around his friends Victor Pasmore (1908–1988) and Richard Hamilton (1922–2011). Even in retirement, his work, in its return to figuration from abstraction, displays his consistent qualities of humour and inventiveness. Rowntree’s oeuvre is both influenced by and anticipates a wide variety of artistic styles, from Ravilious to David Hockney, from the Euston Road School to the Dadaism of Kurt Schwitters. His work, however, remains unmistakably his own.


Murals & Decorative Painting 1920-1960


Published: October 2013
352 pages, 130 colour illustrations
ISBN: 978-1-908326-23

Nominated for the William MB Berger Prize for British Art History.

This book is illustrated with a series of specially commissioned photographs that record some of the least known but most remarkable mural cycles in Great Britain. In the vast majority of cases these works have previously only been reproduced in black and white if at all. … Today murals are rarely seen as the artist intended. Often they are partially obscured, especially where there has been a change of building use. Frequently works are completely covered up or painted over – examples include murals by Mary Sargent Florence, Mary Adshead, Eric Ravilious, Dora Carrington, William Roberts and Gilbert Spencer. Where murals survive they are more often than not displaced works. Historic photographs showing John Piper’s The Englishman’s Home at The Festival of Britain, in situ on the river side of the Homes and Gardens Pavilion on Belvedere Road, come as a revelation; a digital reconstruction of Frank Brangwyn’s Empire panels for The House of Lords, seen in situ as they were originally intended, gives a dramatically more favourable impression than their final installation in The Brangwyn Hall, Swansea.


Murals & Decorative Painting 1910-1970


Published: February 2013
128 pages 114 illustrations
ISBN: 978-0-9567139-6

The murals that were produced in this country in the twentieth century remain as one of the great inventive achievements in modern British art. Highly original in their approach to design, balancing varying degrees of modernity or tradition, they demonstrate the creative drive of their makers and contain singular expressions of the aesthetic, personal and social concerns that typify the ages from which they come. Some are celebrations of simple human pleasures, perhaps to decorate a refreshment room, an ocean liner or a dining room. Others are intended to be the highest expressions of their art, ambitious allegorical or decorative compositions that like the frescoes of the Renaissance would speak through the ages to later generations. The individuals and committees who commissioned them similarly believed they would both represent the best that Britain had to offer and mark the high accomplishment of contemporary society, elevating the public and private spaces they occupied and inspiring moral purpose.


Thomas Monnington


Published: 1997
64 pages 43 illustrations

Lawrence Gowing describes Monnington as a compositional master in the tradition of the great Tuscan and Umbrian fresco painters and quotes lohn Lessore, former pupil, as saying: 'If anyone ever understood composition, he did, and so drawing, the volume and movement of which he explained geometrically, not in terms of measurement and surface realism: the appearance was always subordinate to the underlying structure ... Every pencil mark tells us a bit more about this unique character, the extraordinary originality of his mind, every period of his life – the Slade. Italy, the early portraits and murals (House of Commons. Bank of England). the ceilings. the Stations of the Cross, the abstracts, every period makes its own contribution. Only in this way can we grasp the size of his mind and how it evolved and absorbed such an astonishing range of experience, art and life, all perfectly connected and related.’


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