Harry Carleton Attwood

The Model - 1930s mural design for Eltham Palace by Harry Carleton Attwood

1935

HARRY CARLETON ATTWOOD (1907-1985) Plenty - Design for Eltham Palace Chalks Framed 20.5 by 12 cm., 8 by 4 ¾ in. (frame size 39.5 by 31.5 cm., 15 ½ by 12 ½ in.) Attwood was born i...

GILBERT LEDWARD, RA, PRBS (1888-1960) Tennis, Golf, Shooting, Ice-Skating, Dreaming – Proposed Design for Decorative Frieze in the Italian Drawing Room at Eltham Palace, commissioned by Stephen Courtauld Signed and dated July 9th 1933 Watercolour and pencil 12.5 by 49.5 cm., 5 by 19 ½ in. (frame size 36 by 67 cm., 14 ¼ by 26 ¼ in.) Exhibited: The artist’s daughter; London, The Fine Art Society, A Centenary Tribute, Feb 1988, no. 43. Gilbert Ledward was born in London. He was educated at St Mark’s College, Chelsea. In 1905 he entered the Royal College of Art to study sculpture under Edouard Lanteri and in 1910 he entered the Royal Academy Schools. In 1913 he won the Prix de Rome for sculpture, the Royal Academy’s travelling award and gold medal, which allowed him to travel in Italy until the outbreak of the Wold War I. During the war he served as a lieutenant in the Royal Garrison Artillery and was appointed as an official war artist in 1918. Following the war he was largely occupied as a sculptor of war memorials including the Guards Division memorial in St James’s Park and the Household Division’s memorial in Horse Guards Parade. In 1934, supported by Eric Gill and Edwin Lutyens, he established a company called Sculptured Memorials and Headstones, which promoted better design of memorials in English churchyards. His war memorials after World War II include one in Westminster Abbey to the Submarine Service, Commandos and Airborne Forces. Ledward was Professor of Sculpture at the Royal College of Art (1927-1929) and in 1937 was elected at Royal Academician. He became President of the Royal Society of British Sculptors and a trustee of the Royal Academy. The present work is a design for an intended decorative frieze for the Italian Drawing Room of Eltham Palace. In 1935 the remains of the medieval royal palace of Eltham was rescued from decay by Stephen and Virginia Courtald who built an ultra modern Art Deco house to adjoin the existing Great Hall. They employed the architects John Seeley and Paul Edward Paget and the fashionable Mayfair interior designer the Marchese Peter Malacrida to design the strikingly glamorous 1930s interiors of the new house. The dramatic entrance hall was created by the Swedish designer Rolf Engstromer...

Clearly influenced by the decorative motifs of Frank Lloyd Wright, Rennie Mackintosh and the Secessionists, this remarkable study for a set of four murals (or four panels of a foldin...

In this remarkable drawing, famed muralist Lassell Ripley depicts primitive man, warming himself by the fire with little to wear, looking into the distance toward the bright, white Art Deco spires of modern civilization. The contrast of early mankind with the advances of 1930s America is inspiring and beautiful, and Ripley clearly draw this to prepare for a mural project, probably unexecuted. Ripley is best known for his sportsman paintings, highly collectible today, but early in his career he became known for his murals, including several depicting the life of Paul Revere for the post office in Lexington...