Frances Macdonald (12 April 1914 – 5 March 2002), was an English painter known for her panoramic scenes painted in Wales, the south of France and in London during World War II.

Early life

Frances Macdonald was born in

Wallasey Wallasey () is a town within the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral, in Merseyside, England; until 1974, it was part of the historic county of Cheshire. It is situated at the mouth of the River Mersey, at the north-eastern corner of the Wirral Pe ...

, Cheshire, the younger of the two daughters of Francis Macdonald, a bank manager, and his wife Jessie. She trained at Wallasey School of Art between 1930 and 1934, before studying at the

Royal College of Art The Royal College of Art (RCA) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom, with campuses in South Kensington, Battersea and White City. It is the only entirely postgraduate art and design university in the United Kingdom. It offe ...

until 1938. Whilst at the RCA Macdonald met her future husband, the artist Leonard Appelbee.

World War II

At the start of the Second World War, Macdonald intended to volunteer for nursing duties but was surprised to receive a war artist commission, given how recently she had been a student. Throughout the War Macdonald received a number of short-term contracts and commissions for individual pictures from the War Artists' Advisory Committee (WAAC), and the ''Recording Britain'' project that kept her employed as an artist throughout the conflict. Macdonalds commissions included both nursing scenes, which WAAC often allocated to women artists, and heavy industrial production and repair work. The first picture Macdonald submitted to WAAC, showing people in a shelter at

Queen Alexandra Military Hospital The Queen Alexandra Military Hospital (QAMH) opened in July 1905. It was constructed immediately to the north of the Tate Britain (across a side-street) adjacent to the River Thames on the borders of the neighbourhoods of Millbank and Pimlico, W ...

at Millbank during an air raid was deemed unacceptable due to the evident fear and apprehension portrayed. A second hospital painting was accepted in January 1941 and a new depiction of the Millbank air raid was accepted in November 1941. When the QAM Hospital was evacuated to Oxford, Macdonald followed and was permitted to paint at the nearby aircraft dump at Cowley. This resulted in three paintings, one of which was declined by WAAC. During the war, other paintings by Macdonald were accepted by the Committee but were then prohibited from going on public display by wartime censorship, if for example they showed structures built after 1939. In September 1941, she returned to London to paint a cityscape showing

St Paul's Cathedral St Paul's Cathedral is an Anglican cathedral in London and is the seat of the Bishop of London. The cathedral serves as the mother church of the Diocese of London. It is on Ludgate Hill at the highest point of the City of London and is a Grad ...

. A painting by Macdonald of the cathedral surrounded by bombed streets was shown in America during the war but was lost when the ship returning it to Britain was torpedoed and sunk. Later commissions included the London Docks, aircraft repair shops and Bailey bridges plus a portrait of their inventor Donald Bailey. In all, nineteen works by Macdonald were acquired by WAAC, including ''Building the Mulberry Harbour, London Docks'' (1944) which was requested by the

Tate Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the U ...

for its permanent collection at the end of the war. The

Imperial War Museum Imperial War Museums (IWM) is a British national museum organisation with branches at five locations in England, three of which are in London. Founded as the Imperial War Museum in 1917, the museum was intended to record the civil and military ...

also has a number of works by Macdonald.

Later life

After the war, Macdonald had her first solo exhibition at the Wildenstein Gallery in 1947. She produced watercolours for ''Londoner's England'' in 1947, wrote an illustrated essay for ''Flowers of Cities'' in 1949, and made drawings of the

South Bank The South Bank is an entertainment and commercial district in central London, next to the River Thames opposite the City of Westminster. It forms a narrow strip of riverside land within the London Borough of Lambeth (where it adjoins Alber ...

for the

London County Council London County Council (LCC) was the principal local government body for the County of London throughout its existence from 1889 to 1965, and the first London-wide general municipal authority to be directly elected. It covered the area today kno ...

prior to the

Festival of Britain The Festival of Britain was a national exhibition and fair that reached millions of visitors throughout the United Kingdom in the summer of 1951. Historian Kenneth O. Morgan says the Festival was a "triumphant success" during which people: ...

. In 1951, the Arts Council commissioned a large landscape painting from Macdonald for the exhibition ''60 Paintings for '51'', which was part of the Festival of Britain celebrations in London. Macdonald produced a painting of Penrhyn Quarry, entitled ''The Welsh Singer'', whilst Leonard Appelbee contributed the painting ''One-man Band'' to the same exhibition. Macdonald taught at

Goldsmiths College of Art Goldsmiths, University of London, officially the Goldsmiths' College, is a constituent research university of the University of London in England. It was originally founded in 1891 as The Goldsmiths' Technical and Recreative Institute by the Wor ...

between 1946 and 1948, took a weekly still life class at Beckenham from 1957 until 1969 and also taught at both the Byan Shaw School and the

Ruskin School of Drawing The Ruskin School of Art, known as the Ruskin, is an art school at the University of Oxford, England. It is part of Oxford's Humanities Division. History The Ruskin grew out the Oxford School of Art, which was founded in 1865 and later became ...

. As well as teaching art, Macdonald also exhibited at the Alfred Brod Gallery in 1961. In 1989 Francis and Leonard moved from the West Country to Kincardine-on-Forth and then to Aberdeen, to be near their only daughter, Jane. Leonard died in 2000, two years before Francis.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Macdonald, Francis 1914 births 2002 deaths 20th-century English painters 20th-century English women artists Alumni of the Royal College of Art British war artists English women painters People from Wallasey World War II artists 20th-century women painters