Thomas Anthony Devas (8 January 1911 – 21 December 1958) was a British portrait painter who was associated with members of the

Euston Road School The Euston Road School is a term applied to a group of English painters, active either as staff or students at the School of Drawing and Painting in London between 1937 and 1939. The School opened in October 1937 at premises in Fitzroy Street bef ...

Early life

Miss M S Cochrane, Rrc, Srn, Matron, Charing Cross Hospital Art

Thomas Anthony Devas, known as Anthony, was born in

Bromley Bromley is a large town in Greater London, England, within the London Borough of Bromley. It is south-east of Charing Cross, and had an estimated population of 87,889 as of 2011. Originally part of Kent, Bromley became a market town, c ...

Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...

, on 8 January 1911, the second of four children to Thomas Gronow Devas, the chairman of the Devas Routledge textile firm, and Marjorie Cecilia Watson. Devas attended

Repton School Repton School is a 13–18 co-educational, independent, day and boarding school in the English public school tradition, in Repton, Derbyshire, England. Sir John Port of Etwall, on his death in 1557, left funds to create a grammar school whi ...

and entered the

Slade School of Fine Art The UCL Slade School of Fine Art (informally The Slade) is the art school of University College London (UCL) and is based in London, England. It has been ranked as the UK's top art and design educational institution. The school is organised as ...

in 1927, aged 16. At the Slade he studied alongside Rodrigo Moynihan,

William Coldstream Sir William Menzies Coldstream, CBE (28 February 1908 – 18 February 1987) was an English realist painter and a long-standing art teacher. Biography Coldstream was born at Belford, Northumberland, in northern England, the second son of co ...

and Robin Darwin. In 1931 Devas married his fellow Slade student Nicolette Macnamara, whose sister Caitlin would later marry Dylan Thomas. Through the Macnamara sisters Devas met, and was influenced in his portrait painting by,

Augustus John Augustus Edwin John (4 January 1878 – 31 October 1961) was a Welsh painter, draughtsman, and etcher. For a time he was considered the most important artist at work in Britain: Virginia Woolf remarked that by 1908 the era of John Singer Sarge ...

World War II

During the Second World War, Devas served as an air raid warden in London as his persistent ill-health had excluded him from military service. Devas held his first major solo exhibition at the Agnew's Gallery in 1941 and he continued with his portrait painting, most notably with portraits of both Nicolette and Caitlin and also his friend Laurie Lee. The

War Artists' Advisory Committee The War Artists Advisory Committee (WAAC), was a British government agency established within the Ministry of Information at the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 and headed by Sir Kenneth Clark. Its aim was to compile a comprehensive artist ...

, WAAC, commissioned several portraits from Devas of individuals who had distinguished themselves in the conflict, including

Wilfred Thesiger Sir Wilfred Patrick Thesiger (3 June 1910 – 24 August 2003), also known as Mubarak bin Landan ( ar, مُبَارَك بِن لَنْدَن, ''the blessed one of London'') was a British military officer, explorer, and writer. Thesiger's trav ...

, Captain George Hunt and dispatch rider Pamela McGeorge, At other points in the war WAAC purchased a number of portraits from Devas, including one of the Matron of

Charing Cross Hospital Charing Cross Hospital is an acute general teaching hospital located in Hammersmith, London, United Kingdom. The present hospital was opened in 1973, although it was originally established in 1818, approximately five miles east, in central L ...

Later life

After the war Devas's reputation as a society portrait painter continued to grow. In 1943 he became a member of the

New English Art Club The New English Art Club (NEAC) was founded in London in 1885 as an alternative venue to the Royal Academy. It continues to hold an annual exhibition of paintings and drawings at the Mall Galleries in London, exhibiting works by both members and a ...

and in 1945 he was elected to the

Royal Society of Portrait Painters The Royal Society of Portrait Painters is a charity based at Carlton House Terrace, SW1, London that promotes the practice and appreciation of portraiture. Its Annual Exhibition of portraiture is held at Mall Galleries, and it runs a commissi ...

. Devas was elected an Associate member of the Royal Academy in 1953. He lived and worked at the Rossetti Studios in Chelsea and at one time shared studio space with the artist Norman Hepple. During the 1950s Devas produced at least nine portraits of young women for the Aero Girls advertising campaign run by

J Walter Thompson J, or j, is the tenth letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its usual name in English is ''jay'' (pronounced ), with a now-uncommon vari ...

for

Rowntree's Rowntree's is a British confectionery brand and former business based in York, England. Rowntree developed the Kit Kat (introduced in 1935), Aero (introduced in 1935), Fruit Pastilles (introduced in 1881), Smarties (introduced in 1937) brands ...

chocolate. Other commissions included a portrait of Sir George Dyson for the

Royal College of Music The Royal College of Music is a conservatoire established by royal charter in 1882, located in South Kensington, London, UK. It offers training from the undergraduate to the doctoral level in all aspects of Western Music including performanc ...

in 1952 and a portrait of

Elizabeth II Elizabeth II (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary; 21 April 1926 – 8 September 2022) was Queen of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms from 6 February 1952 until her death in 2022. She was queen regnant of 32 sovereign states during ...

in 1957. Devas's final public commission was of

Peggy Ashcroft Dame Edith Margaret Emily Ashcroft (22 December 1907 – 14 June 1991), known professionally as Peggy Ashcroft, was an English actress whose career spanned more than 60 years. Born to a comfortable middle-class family, Ashcroft was deter ...

for the

Royal Shakespeare Theatre The Royal Shakespeare Theatre (RST) (originally called the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre) is a grade II* listed 1,040+ seat thrust stage theatre owned by the Royal Shakespeare Company dedicated to the English playwright and poet William Shakespea ...

and was first shown, posthumously, at the Royal Academy in 1959. After a prolonged period of heart troubles Devas died of a stroke at his home in December 1958. He is buried at

Putney Vale Cemetery Putney Vale Cemetery and Crematorium in southwest London is located in Putney Vale, surrounded by Putney Heath and Wimbledon Common and Richmond Park. It is located within of parkland. The cemetery was opened in 1891 and the crematorium in 1938 ...

in London. His epitaph reads "''He was a rare man''". A memorial exhibition was held at the Agnew's Gallery in 1959. Several years later, his widow Nicolette married the artist

Rupert Shephard Rupert Norman Shephard (12 February 1909 – 16 March 1992) was an English painter, illustrator and art teacher. Early life Shephard was born in Islington, the son of an engineer and a charity worker, who were both Quakers and keen amateu ...

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Devas, Anthony 1911 births 1958 deaths 20th-century English male artists 20th-century English painters Alumni of the Slade School of Fine Art Artists from Kent Associates of the Royal Academy British male painters British war artists Burials at Putney Vale Cemetery English portrait painters People educated at Repton School People from Bromley Royal Society of Portrait Painters World War II artists