Dorothy Annan (20 January 1900 – 28 June 1983) was an English painter, potter and muralist who was born in Brazil to British parents and was educated in France and Germany. Her works were frequently shown at the Leicester Galleries in London and she had her first solo show there in 1945.

Biography

Born in 1900, Annan exhibited with the

Artists' International Association The Artists' International Association (AIA) was an organisation founded in London in 1933 out of discussion among Pearl Binder, Clifford Rowe, Misha Black, James Fitton, James Boswell, James Holland, Edward Ardizzone, Peter Laszlo Peri'Artist ...

, and once featured in an art show in an air-raid shelter beside work 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 Sarg ...

during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

. Annan also exhibited works at the

Royal Academy The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly in London. Founded in 1768, it has a unique position as an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects. Its pur ...

, with the

London Group The London Group is a society based in London, England, created to offer additional exhibiting opportunities to artists besides the Royal Academy of Arts. Formed in 1913, it is one of the oldest artist-led organisations in the world. It was form ...

and with 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 ...

. In 1949 she taught at the Bath College of Art. Annan was married to sculptor Trevor Tennant (1900-80). For a time they lived in a single-decker bus. She died in 1983 at the Sue Ryder Home in

Snettisham Snettisham is a village and civil parish in the English county of Norfolk. It is located near the west coast of Norfolk, some south of the seaside resort of Hunstanton, north of the town of King's Lynn and northwest of the city of Norwic ...

, Norfolk. Examples of Annan's paintings are held in many national collections and she is also known for her many mosaics and tile murals, several of which have been destroyed in recent decades. The largest single example, the ''Expanding Universe'' at the

Bank of England The Bank of England is the central bank of the United Kingdom and the model on which most modern central banks have been based. Established in 1694 to act as the English Government's banker, and still one of the bankers for the Government of ...

, was destroyed in 1997. Only three of her major public murals are believed to survive.

Fleet Building telecom murals

In November 2011 the

Department for Culture, Media and Sport , type = Department , logo = Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport logo.svg , logo_width = , logo_caption = , seal = , seal_width = , seal_caption = , picture = Gove ...

, DCMS, granted Grade II listed status to Annan's murals on the front of the Fleet Building, 70 Farringdon Street, formerly the largest telephone exchange in London. The murals were commissioned at a cost of £300 per panel in 1960. Annan visited the Hathernware pottery in Loughborough and hand-scored her designs onto each wet clay tile, her brush marks can also be seen in the fired panels.

English Heritage English Heritage (officially the English Heritage Trust) is a charity that manages over 400 historic monuments, buildings and places. These include prehistoric sites, medieval castles, Roman forts and country houses. The charity states that i ...

advised the DCMS that the nine ceramic tile murals, which depict pylons, cables, telegraph poles and generators, were of "historic interest" to the telecoms industry and had "relative rarity as surviving works of 1960s mural art". The listing was supported by the

Twentieth Century Society The Twentieth Century Society (C20) is a British charity which campaigns for the preservation of architectural heritage from 1914 onwards. The society's interests embrace buildings and artefacts that characterise 20th-century Britain. It is form ...

and the Tiles & Architectural Ceramics Society, artist

Frank Auerbach Frank Helmut Auerbach (born 29 April 1931) is a German-British painter. Born in Germany, he has been a naturalised British subject since 1947. He is considered one of the leading names in the School of London, with fellow artists Francis Bacon ...

and

Penelope Curtis Penelope Curtis (born 1961) is a British art historian and curator. Fom 2015 to 2020 she was the director of Lisbon's Museu Calouste Gulbenkian, and from 2010 to 2015 director of Tate Britain. She is the author of several monographs on sculpture ...

, Director of

Tate Britain Tate Britain, known from 1897 to 1932 as the National Gallery of British Art and from 1932 to 2000 as the Tate Gallery, is an art museum on Millbank in the City of Westminster in London, England. It is part of the Tate network of galleries in ...

. The building is owned by

Goldman Sachs Goldman Sachs () is an American multinational investment bank and financial services company. Founded in 1869, Goldman Sachs is headquartered at 200 West Street in Lower Manhattan, with regional headquarters in London, Warsaw, Bangalore, H ...

, who wished to redevelop the site and opposed the listing of the murals. In January 2013, the

City of London Corporation The City of London Corporation, officially and legally the Mayor and Commonalty and Citizens of the City of London, is the municipal governing body of the City of London, the historic centre of London and the location of much of the United King ...

agreed to take ownership of the murals, and in September 2013 these were moved to a permanent location in a publicly accessible part of the

Barbican Estate The Barbican Estate, or Barbican, is a residential complex of around 2,000 flats, maisonettes, and houses in central London, England, within the City of London. It is in an area once devastated by World War II bombings and densely populated b ...

. They are displayed in their original sequence within an enclosed section of the Barbican Highwalk between Speed House and the

Barbican Centre The Barbican Centre is a performing arts centre in the Barbican Estate of the City of London and the largest of its kind in Europe. The centre hosts classical and contemporary music concerts, theatre performances, film screenings and art exhi ...

. The family of Annan and Tennant donated their archive to the Archive of Sculptors' Papers at the

Henry Moore Foundation The Henry Moore Foundation is a registered charity in England, established for education and promotion of the fine arts — in particular, to advance understanding of the works of Henry Moore. The charity was set up with a gift from the arti ...

References

External links

*
PatternLondon blog post – April 2011To Brighten the Environment: Ceramic Tile Murals in Britain 1950–70, by Lynn PearsonPaper presented at the Tiles & Ceramics Society Postwar Murals study day – November 2007
{{DEFAULTSORT:Annan, Dorothy 1900 births 1983 deaths 20th-century English painters 20th-century English women artists English women painters People from Pará Women muralists