Brenda Rawnsley; Art lover who cajoled many important contemporary artists into producing affordable works for display in schools
Hyfler/Rosner
July 4, 2007
Brenda Rawnsley
Art lover who cajoled many important contemporary artists
into producing affordable works for display in schools
Brenda Rawnsley persuaded some of the 20th century's
greatest artists - including Picasso, Matisse and Braque -
to create original prints to be distributed to Britain's
schools. Her bold project for affordable modern art aimed to
shape the tastes of a whole generation of postwar children
who would otherwise have had little contact with fine art.
Rawnsley had little knowledge of art when she began the
scheme in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War.
But her husband Derek, who was killed in 1943, had before
the war founded a small company, School Prints Ltd, which
hired out Old Masters to schools with the aim of improving
aesthetic standards.
The young widow took over the business and set about
revitalising it by focusing on original works by
contemporary artists which would be sold at low cost, rather
than rented. Within a year, despite scarcities and paper
rationing, she had persuaded artists including L. S. Lowry,
John Nash, Julian Trevelyan, Hans Feibusch and Feliks
Topolski to contribute works which she then set out to sell
to schools.
She reached the artists with the help of Herbert Read, the
noted art critic, who suggested artists for Rawnsley to
approach. Although he was an anarchist and she had been a
society debutante, they formed a successful partnership,
united by an interest in education through art. Rawnsley
contacted artists with letters like this one to Barnett
Freedman: "We are producing a series of lithographs, four
each term, for use in schools as a means of giving children
an understanding of contemporary art. By keeping the price
as low as possible, we are able to bring this scheme within
the reach of all education authorities . . . I wonder
whether you are interested in this scheme and if so whether
you could send us a small rough for consideration." The fee
was £85, with a royalty of £5 per 1,000 prints sold.
The first two series, with print runs of 4,000 to 7,000 for
each of the 24 prints, proved successful and were much
appreciated by teachers. One director of education wrote
that they had helped to "foster a love of beauty in the
children" - though some schools thought the art too
contemporary, and were perturbed by some of the images.
"Maybe I haven't grasped the 'inner meanings' or maybe ought
to be more childlike," a Birmingham teacher complained.
Emboldened, Rawnsley decided that the third series of prints
would expose children to art from beyond Britain, and
borrowed £10,000 with which to entice some of the great
names of French painting. In June 1947 she hired a plane and
set off for France with Raglan Squire (obituary, June 9,
2004 ), a friend of her husband who had become chairman of
School Prints.
Arriving in Paris, she tracked down Braque in Montparnasse
and offered him £100 up front and the same again on receipt,
but he said he would only be associated with the scheme if
other reputable artists were involved. Léger, however,
immediately agreed. After meeting Picasso's financial
adviser, Rawnsley and Squire decided to fly to the South of
France to try to speak to the artist himself.
Loitering on the beach at Golfe-Juan, they succeeded in
"bumping into" Picasso, who invited them to lunch. "It's all
very simple when you know what you're aiming at," Rawnsley
recorded at the time. Persuaded that the scheme was for the
benefit of "les enfants du monde", Picasso agreed, although
he turned down an invitation to fly with them as he felt
that his life and works were too precious to be put at risk.
After stopping in Perpignan, where an arthritis-stricken
Dufy said he would try to do something with his left hand,
they revisited Braque. He now relented, and a very frail
Matisse agreed to do a papier déchiré. Rawnsley returned to
England only a week after setting off.
After the delicate process of getting the artists to
deliver, and much negotiation over production and transport,
the "European series" of six prints was launched in 1949,
also including a work by Henry Moore. The timing was
fortuitous, as Sir Alfred Munnings, president of the Royal
Academy, had just launched a vituperative attack on modern
art, denouncing Picasso and Matisse by name.
The series won widespread press attention in the resulting
furore, which continued in 1951 when Rawnsley set off on a
sales trip to Australia, New Zealand, Canada and America.
Artists were able to shrug off the criticism. Braque stated:
"Children are the more useful and sharpest critics. They
understand us because they live in a world of fantasy
similar to artists." Children do seem to have liked the
prints - one 14-year-old was quoted as saying: "Picasso does
not paint too badly. I should like to try, too!" But not
enough educationists were convinced, and commercially the
scheme failed - Rawnsley was left with a large debt and
stacks of unsold prints.
Brenda Mary Hugh-Jones was born in Cowley, Oxford, in 1916.
Her father was part of the British administration in Egypt
and her mother was a cousin of Anthony Eden. Her parents
divorced when she was young, and Rawnsley spent holidays
from her boarding school variously hunting with the Edens in
Wiltshire or visiting her father in Cairo.
Although she did well academically, Rawnsley chose the
debutante circle over Oxford and spent several years
enjoying a leisured life in England and Egypt. But at the
outbreak of war she was eager to enlist, becoming a clerk at
the Ministry of Economic Warfare after walking out on
latrine duty at an ATS officer cadet unit.
She met Derek Rawnsley in 1939 and they married in February
1941.
The young pilot was immediately sent to Cairo and,
determined to join him, Rawnsley wangled her way into the
Women's Auxiliary Air Force and hurried through the officers
course. She arrived in Cairo in January 1942 and it was
during their time here that the couple formed plans to make
prints for schoolchildren after the war. Derek Rawnsley was
killed in an accident in February 1943.
Brenda Rawnsley spent the rest of the war working in
Alexandria, Algiers and London, first for General "Jumbo"
Wilson, Commander-in-Chief of the Middle East, then for
Duncan Sandys. When the war ended, she devoted her drive and
energy to realising the project she had concocted with her
husband.
She carried on the original business of hiring out
reproductions of well-known paintings to schools, and in the
1950s she expanded this to industry and then to hospitals.
In 1953 she attempted, unsuccessfully, to sell sculpture to
schools. She had joined the Fine Art Trade Guild in 1946,
and became Master in 1961.
By the late 1960s Rawnsley began looking for buyers for the
business. The Observer was running a scheme similar to
school prints, whereby a new generation of artists such as
Richard Hamilton, Elizabeth Frink, Joe Tilson and David
Hockney were commissioned to produce original prints to sell
to readers. In 1971 the paper agreed to sell the remaining
stock of the European series. By this time the merits of the
pieces were more widely recognised, and they sold well. The
rest of the business was sold to the paper's Middle East
correspondent, Patrick Seale.
The remaining prints have now become highly collectible, and
this year all 30 of the lithographs were exhibited at
Pallant House gallery in Chichester. The School Prints, by
Ruth Artmonsky, was published at the same time.
With the business sold, Rawnsley moved to Bury St Edmunds,
where she became a librarian. On retirement she settled in
Milford-on-Sea, Hampshire. She remained convinced of the
importance of her scheme and in 1994 she commented that the
situation in schools "is as desperate as it was after the
war. I am utterly dedicated to the idea that the younger the
child the better, because they do form ideas about shapes
and colour at an early age."
She was married for a second time to Geoffrey (Pete)
Keighley, who predeceased her. She is survived by a son.
Brenda Rawnsley, managing director of School Prints Ltd, was
born on July 31, 1916. She died on June 25, 2007, aged 90
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