Mansard Gallery Poster - Claud Lovat Fraser
Mansard Gallery Poster - Claud Lovat Fraser
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CLAUD LOVAT FRASER
(1890-1921)
Poster for Mansard Gallery Exhibition - 1919
Colour lithograph poster
Framed
75 by 50 cm., 29 ½ by 19 ¾ in.
(frame size 81 by 55.5 cm., 32 by 22 in.)
Lovat Fraser designed this poster to advertise the exhibition of his own works at the Mansard Gallery, Heal & Son Ltd., 27 September – 25 October 1919. The forward-thinking Mansard Gallery was opened by Ambrose Heal in 1917 and was located on the fifth floor of Heal’s department store in Tottenham Court Road, London. Throughout the early 20th century it held a number of major exhibitions including the first London shows for Picasso, Matisse and Modigliani.
Claud Lovat Fraser was born in London and educated at Charterhouse. Initially intending to join the family firm of solicitors he gave up his legal studies in order to attend the Westminster School of Art. His love of literature and theatre led him to concentrate his artistic output on theatrical design and highly original book illustrations and publications. His passion for the work of Jacobean and eighteenth-century playwrights was encouraged by his friends Edward Gordon Craig and Herbert Beerbohm Tree who also introduced him to the world of theatrical costume and set design.
In late 1914, despite a history of frail health, Fraser enlisted with the Inns of Court Officer Training Corps and was commissioned to the 14th Battalion of the Durham Light Infantry. His wartime sketchbooks (many now in the Bryn Mawr College Library, Pennsylvania, USA) and the drawings he included in his correspondence provide an intimate visual record of the trenches and battlefields of Flanders in this early phase of the war. He was one of few British officers to survive the battle of Loos (September 25-October 8, 1915) and in December 1915 his battalion was the first to withstand a German gas attack. In the excitement and confusion of the event, he neglected to put on his gas mask until he had emerged from his bunker and was dispatched to England for a short sick leave. Fraser was promoted to captain in January 1916, but by late February he was home on leave again, suffering from the effects of gas and shellshock after a battle at the Ypres Salient. While recovering, Fraser occupied himself with plans for a pictorial history of the Grenadier Guards. Successive Medical Board Reviews continued to find his health unfit for battle through to the end of the war. Fraser instead served the Army as a clerk upon the completion of his sick leave in August 1916. He worked in the War Office on visual propaganda from October 1916 until late April 1917 and at the Army Record Office at Hounslow until his discharge in March 1919.
After the war he worked with extreme energy holding a number of exhibitions and most importantly producing his revolutionary designs for the costumes and sets for Nigel Playfair’s important productions of As You Like It and The Beggar’s Opera. A workaholic, Fraser died of exhaustion and his weakened heart whilst staying with his friend, the artist Paul Nash, at Dymchurch, Kent in 1921.
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Poster for Mansard Gallery Exhibition - 1919Colour lithograph posterFramed75 by 50 cm., 29 ½ by 19 ¾ in.(frame size 81 by 55.5 cm., 32 by 22 in.)Lovat Fraser designed this poster to advertise the exhibition of his own works at the Mansard Gallery, Heal & Son Ltd., 27 September – 25 October 1919. The forward-thinking Mansard Gallery was opened by Ambrose Heal in 1917 and was located on the fifth floor of Heal’s department store in Tottenham Court Road, London. Throughout the early 20th century it held a number of major exhibitions including the first London shows for Picasso, Matisse and Modigliani.Claud Lovat Fraser was born in London and educated at Charterhouse. Initially intending to join the family firm of solicitors he gave up his legal studies in order to attend the Westminster School of Art. His love of literature and theatre led him to concentrate his artistic output on theatrical design and highly original book illustrations and publications. His passion for the work of Jacobean and eighteenth-century playwrights was encouraged by his friends Edward Gordon Craig and Herbert Beerbohm Tree who also introduced him to the world of theatrical costume and set design.In late 1914, despite a history of frail health, Fraser enlisted with the Inns of Court Officer Training Corps and was commissioned to the 14th Battalion of the Durham Light Infantry. His wartime sketchbooks (many now in the Bryn Mawr College Library, Pennsylvania, USA) and the drawings he included in his correspondence provide an intimate visual record of the trenches and battlefields of Flanders in this early phase of the war. He was one of few British officers to survive the battle of Loos (September 25-October 8, 1915) and in December 1915 his battalion was the first to withstand a German gas attack. In the excitement and confusion of the event, he neglected to put on his gas mask until he had emerged from his bunker and was dispatched to England for a short sick leave. Fraser was promoted to captain in January 1916, but by late February he was home on leave again, suffering from the effects of gas and shellshock after a battle at the Ypres Salient. While recovering, Fraser occupied himself with plans for a pictorial history of the Grenadier Guards. Successive Medical Board Reviews continued to find his health unfit for battle through to the end of the war. Fraser instead served the Army as a clerk upon the completion of his sick leave in August 1916. He worked in the War Office on visual propaganda from October 1916 until late April 1917 and at the Army Record Office at Hounslow until his discharge in March 1919.After the war he worked with extreme energy holding a number of exhibitions and most importantly producing his revolutionary designs for the costumes and sets for Nigel Playfair’s important productions of As You Like It and The Beggar’s Opera. A workaholic, Fraser died of exhaustion and his weakened heart whilst staying with his friend, the artist Paul Nash, at Dymchurch, Kent in 1921.){kind=link}