Oliver Hilary Sambourne Messel (13 January 1904 – 13 July 1978) was an English artist and one of the foremost

stage designer Scenic design (also known as scenography, stage design, or set design) is the creation of theatrical, as well as film or television scenery. Scenic designers come from a variety of artistic backgrounds, but in recent years, are mostly trained ...

s of the 20th century.

Early life

Messel was born in London, the second son of Lieutenant-Colonel Leonard Messel and Maud, the only daughter of

Linley Sambourne Edward Linley Sambourne (4 January 18443 August 1910) was an English cartoonist and illustrator most famous for being a draughtsman for the satirical magazine ''Punch magazine, Punch'' for more than forty years and rising to the position of "Fir ...

, the eminent illustrator and contributor to ''

Punch Punch commonly refers to: * Punch (combat), a strike made using the hand closed into a fist * Punch (drink), a wide assortment of drinks, non-alcoholic or alcoholic, generally containing fruit or fruit juice Punch may also refer to: Places * Pun ...

'' magazine. He was educated at

Hawtreys Hawtreys Preparatory School was an independent boys' preparatory school in England, first established in Slough, later moved to Westgate-on-Sea, then to Oswestry, and finally to a country house near Great Bedwyn, Wiltshire. In its early years ...

, a boarding preparatory school then in Kent,

Westminster School (God Gives the Increase) , established = Earliest records date from the 14th century, refounded in 1560 , type = Public school Independent day and boarding school , religion = Church of England , head_label = Hea ...

and

Eton Eton most commonly refers to Eton College, a public school in Eton, Berkshire, England. Eton may also refer to: Places *Eton, Berkshire, a town in Berkshire, England * Eton, Georgia, a town in the United States * Éton, a commune in the Meuse dep ...

— where his classmates included

Harold Acton Sir Harold Mario Mitchell Acton (5 July 1904 – 27 February 1994) was a British writer, scholar, and aesthete who was a prominent member of the Bright Young Things. He wrote fiction, biography, history and autobiography. During his stay in Ch ...

Eric Blair Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950), better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist, and critic. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to totalitari ...

, Brian Howard, and

Robert Byron Robert Byron (26 February 1905 – 24 February 1941) was a British travel writer, best known for his travelogue ''The Road to Oxiana''. He was also a noted writer, art critic and historian. Biography He was the son of Eric Byron, a civil engi ...

— and at 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 ...

University College In a number of countries, a university college is a college institution that provides tertiary education but does not have full or independent university status. A university college is often part of a larger university. The precise usage varies ...

Painting, stage design

After completing his studies, he became a portrait painter and commissions for theatre work soon followed, beginning with his designing the masks for a London production of

Serge Diaghilev Sergei Pavlovich Diaghilev ( ; rus, Серге́й Па́влович Дя́гилев, , sʲɪˈrɡʲej ˈpavləvʲɪdʑ ˈdʲæɡʲɪlʲɪf; 19 August 1929), usually referred to outside Russia as Serge Diaghilev, was a Russian art critic, pat ...

's ballet '' Zephyr et Flore'' (1925). Subsequently, he created masks, costumes, and sets – many of which have been preserved by the

Theatre Museum The Theatre Museum in the Covent Garden district of London, England, was the United Kingdom's national museum of the performing arts. It was a branch of the UK's national museum of applied arts, the Victoria and Albert Museum. It opened in 1974 ...

, London – for various works staged by

C. B. Cochran Sir Charles Blake Cochran (25 September 1872 31 January 1951), generally known as C. B. Cochran, was an English theatrical manager and impresario. He produced some of the most successful musical revues, musicals and plays of the 1920s and 193 ...

's revues through the late 1920s and early 1930s. His work as a set designer was also featured in the US in such Broadway shows as '' The Country Wife'' (1936); ''

The Lady's Not For Burning ''The Lady's Not for Burning'' is a 1948 play by Christopher Fry. A romantic comedy in three acts, in verse, it is set in the Middle Ages ("1400, either more or less or exactly"). It reflects the world's "exhaustion and despair" following Wor ...

'' (1950); ''

Romeo and Juliet ''Romeo and Juliet'' is a Shakespearean tragedy, tragedy written by William Shakespeare early in his career about the romance between two Italian youths from feuding families. It was among Shakespeare's most popular plays during his lifetim ...

'' (1951); '' House of Flowers'' (1954), for which he won the Tony Award; and ''

Rashomon is a 1950 Jidaigeki psychological thriller/crime film directed and written by Akira Kurosawa, working in close collaboration with cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa. Starring Toshiro Mifune, Machiko Kyō, Masayuki Mori (actor), Masayuki Mori, and ...

'' (1959), which was nominated for a Tony Award for his costume as well as his set design. He also designed the costumes for ''

''; ''

''; and '' Gigi'' (1973), the latter two receiving Tony Award nominations. For film his costume designs include ''

The Private Life of Don Juan ''The Private Life of Don Juan'' is a 1934 British comedy-drama film directed by Alexander Korda and starring Douglas Fairbanks, Merle Oberon and Benita Hume. At the age of 51, it was the final role of Fairbanks, who died five years later. The f ...

'' (1934); ''

Scarlet Pimpernel ''The Scarlet Pimpernel'' is the first novel in a series of historical fiction by Baroness Orczy, published in 1905. It was written after her stage play of the same title (co-authored with Montague Barstow) enjoyed a long run in London, having ...

'' (1934); ''Romeo and Juliet'' (1936); '' The Thief of Bagdad'' (1940); and '' Caesar and Cleopatra'' (1945). For ''

'' he also served as Set Decorator. He was Art Director on '' Caesar and Cleopatra'' (1945), '' On Such a Night'' (1956) and Production Designer on ''

Suddenly Last Summer ''Suddenly Last Summer'' is a one-act play by Tennessee Williams, written in New York in 1957. It opened off Broadway on January 7, 1958, as part of a double bill with another of Williams' one-acts, ''Something Unspoken'' (written in London in ...

'' (1959), for which he was nominated for the Academy Award.

Wartime camouflage

During the

Second World War 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 ...

Messel served as a camouflage officer, disguising pillboxes in Somerset. According to his fellow officer

Julian Trevelyan Julian Otto Trevelyan (20 February 1910 – 12 July 1988) was an English artist and poet. Early life Trevelyan was the only child to survive to adulthood of Robert Calverley Trevelyan and his wife Elizabeth van der Hoeven. His grandfather wa ...

, he revelled in the opportunity to give his talents free rein. The disguises of his pillboxes included haystacks, castles, ruins, and roadside cafes.

Post-war career

In 1946, Messel designed the sets and costumes for the

Royal Ballet The Royal Ballet is a British internationally renowned classical ballet company, based at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, London, England. The largest of the five major ballet companies in Great Britain, the Royal Ballet was founded in ...

's new and highly successful production of

Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky , group=n ( ; 7 May 1840 – 6 November 1893) was a Russian composer of the Romantic period. He was the first Russian composer whose music would make a lasting impression internationally. He wrote some of the most popu ...

's ballet '' The Sleeping Beauty'', a production which famously starred

Margot Fonteyn Dame Margaret Evelyn de Arias DBE (''née'' Hookham; 18 May 191921 February 1991), known by the stage name Margot Fonteyn, was an English ballerina. She spent her entire career as a dancer with the Royal Ballet (formerly the Sadler's Wells T ...

. It became the first production of the ballet shown on American television, on the program ''

Producers' Showcase ''Producers' Showcase'' is an American anthology television series that was telecast live during the 1950s in compatible color by NBC. With top talent, the 90-minute episodes, covering a wide variety of genres, aired under the title every fourth M ...

''. That production, the first ever televised in color, survives on black-and-white

kinescope Kinescope , shortened to kine , also known as telerecording in Britain, is a recording of a television program on motion picture film, directly through a lens focused on the screen of a video monitor. The process was pioneered during the 1940 ...

and has been released on DVD. In 2006, it was revived by the Royal Ballet, starring

Alina Cojocaru Alina Cojocaru (born 27 May 1981) is a Romanian ballet dancer. She was previously a principal dancer with The Royal Ballet and a lead principal with the English National Ballet. Early years Alina Cojocaru was born and raised in Bucharest, Roman ...

, with some new additions to the scenic design by Peter Farmer, and released on DVD. In 1953, he was commissioned to design the decor for a suite at London's elegant Dorchester Hotel, one in which he would be happy to live himself. The lavishly ornate Oliver Messel Suite, which the hotel advertises as

Elizabeth Taylor Dame Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor (February 27, 1932 – March 23, 2011) was a British-American actress. She began her career as a child actress in the early 1940s and was one of the most popular stars of classical Hollywood cinema in the 1950s. ...

's favourite place to stay in London, combines

baroque The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...

and

rococo Rococo (, also ), less commonly Roccoco or Late Baroque, is an exceptionally ornamental and theatrical style of architecture, art and decoration which combines asymmetry, scrolling curves, gilding, white and pastel colours, sculpted moulding, ...

styles with modernist sensibility and a considerable dose of fantasy. The suite, along with other suites that he designed in the Dorchester, are preserved as part of Britain's national heritage. It was restored in the 1980s by many of the original craftsmen, overseen by Messel's nephew,

Lord Snowdon Antony Charles Robert Armstrong-Jones, 1st Earl of Snowdon, (7 March 1930 – 13 January 2017), was a British photographer and filmmaker. He is best known for his portraits of world notables, many of them published in ''Vogue'', ''Vanity Fai ...

(Antony Armstrong-Jones), the former husband of

Princess Margaret Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon, (Margaret Rose; 21 August 1930 – 9 February 2002) was the younger daughter of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, and the younger sister and only sibling of Queen Elizabeth ...

. By the mid 50s, despite his earlier acclaim, Messel's set designs were viewed in the UK as tired and escapist in comparison to designs that aimed for photographic realism, which were popular at the time. Messel also contributed to retail design, creating the new Delman shoe store for H. & M. Rayne in

Old Bond Street Bond Street in the West End of London links Piccadilly in the south to Oxford Street in the north. Since the 18th century the street has housed many prestigious and upmarket fashion retailers. The southern section is Old Bond Street and the ...

in 1960. Whereas upmarket shoe stores had been discreet enclaves dressed with curtains and pot plants, while shoes were consigned to underground stores, this radical refit incorporated display stands and cases, some of them illuminated, to show off hundreds of pairs of shoes. An article in ''

The Observer ''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. First published in 1791, it is the w ...

'' noted that: "Mr Messel and Mr Rayne are at one in thinking that shoes to buy should be as easy to see and handle as books in a library".

Messel and the Caribbean

Oliver Messel came from a wealthy, well-connected family, and when his nephew,

Antony Armstrong-Jones Antony Charles Robert Armstrong-Jones, 1st Earl of Snowdon, (7 March 1930 – 13 January 2017), was a British photographer and filmmaker. He is best known for his portraits of world notables, many of them published in ''Vogue'', ''Vanity Fai ...

(Lord Snowdon), married

, a lifelong relationship with the British royal family began. Messel was later to design

Les Jolies Eaux Les Jolies Eaux is a former royal residence on a headland on the island of Mustique, St Vincent and the Grenadines. The villa is in a protected landscape, encompassed by the Caribbean seascape. The native French name means 'Beautiful Waters' a ...

, Princess Margaret's home on

Mustique Mustique is a small private island in the nation of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, which is part of the Grenadines, a chain of islands in the West Indies. The island is located within Grenadines Parish, and the closest island is the uninhab ...

Island in The

Grenadines The Grenadines is a chain of small islands that lie on a line between the larger islands of Saint Vincent and Grenada in the Lesser Antilles. Nine are inhabited and open to the public (or ten, if the offshore island of Young Island is counted): ...

(a 45 min flight west of Barbados), and "Point Lookout" an extraordinary stone beach house on the northern tip of Mustique. In 1966, Messel, exhausted by a demanding theatre season and recurring arthritis, retreated to

Barbados Barbados is an island country in the Lesser Antilles of the West Indies, in the Caribbean region of the Americas, and the most easterly of the Caribbean Islands. It occupies an area of and has a population of about 287,000 (2019 estimate). ...

and the lush beauty of the eastern Caribbean. He was 62 and at the peak of a career in which he had dazzled three decades of theatre-goers with his fantastic, romantic and inspired stage sets and costumes. The warmth, colour and vibrancy of the tropics seemed to liberate new sources of energy and imagination, leading him to what would eventually become a whole new career in designing, building and transforming homes. Not content to rest there, he also designed many furnishings for these homes, particularly for outdoor use. Messel bought an existing house called Maddox, a simple bay house perched above a small beach on the St. James coast. With the help of his companion Vagn Riis-Hansen, with whom he had a 30-year relationship,Robert Aldrich and Garry Wotherspoon, ''Who's who in gay and lesbian history'', (; Routledge, 2002) pp. 364–65; available at Google book
here
and a Barbadian staff, Messel transformed it using the trademarks of his theatrical design: slender Greek columns, flattened arches, white-on-white interiors splashed with bright spots of colour, elaborate plaster mouldings – an easy mix of baroque and classical. It was his use of the materials and traditions of island architecture that was truly innovative. Wealthy friends commissioned Messel to design houses for them, both on Barbados and Mustique, and thus began what architect Barbara Hill described as "his work … of converting quite ordinary houses into wonderlands". As well as his own home, Maddox, he re-designed and supervised the renovations of Leamington House and Pavilion (for the

Heinz The H. J. Heinz Company is an American food processing company headquartered at One PPG Place in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The company was founded by Henry J. Heinz in 1869. Heinz manufactures thousands of food products in plants on six conti ...

family), Crystal Springs, Cockade House, Alan Bay and Fustic House. He designed and built Mango Bay from scratch and was commissioned by the Barbados government to restore the old British officers Garrison headquarters in Queens Park, creating an elegant adaptation of it to a theatre and art gallery. He would probably have gone on to do more on Barbados, but was lured away by his friend Colin Tennant and his private island home,

. Glenconner commissioned Messel to design all the houses built on the island. Between 1960 and 1978 Messel created some 30 house plans, of which over 18 have so far been built. Barbados remained his first island love and his home, and he died there in 1978, at the age of 74. One lasting legacy is that his preferred light sage green shade of paint, now known as "Messel Green' by paint companies in the Caribbean, has been immortalised as many property owners choose this colour for its quintessential Caribbean-ness.

References

Bibliography

* Castle, Charles. ''Oliver Messel: A Biography''. New York:

Thames and Hudson Thames & Hudson (sometimes T&H for brevity) is a publisher of illustrated books in all visually creative categories: art, architecture, design, photography, fashion, film, and the performing arts. It also publishes books on archaeology, history, ...

, 1986. * Pinkham, Roger. ''Oliver Messel''. London:

Victoria and Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and nam ...

, 1983. * Messel, Thomas. ''Oliver Messel, in the Theatre of Design''. New York and London. izzoli2011. * Musson, Jeremy. ''Fustic House & Estate – A Messel Masterpiece''. (Available to read in The London Library), 2010.

External links

Oliver Messel , V&A MuseumOliver Messel Collection: Catalogue and details of access arrangements

W.H. Crain Costume and Scene Design Collection
at the

Harry Ransom Center The Harry Ransom Center (until 1983 the Humanities Research Center) is an archive, library and museum at the University of Texas at Austin, specializing in the collection of literary and cultural artifacts from the Americas and Europe for the pur ...

Oliver Messel's Style
, illustrated article from House and Home
Oliver Messel (1904–1978) , Art UKOliver Messel , Artist , Royal Academy of ArtsOliver Messel , MoMA
{{DEFAULTSORT:Messel, Oliver 1904 births 1978 deaths Donaldson Award winners English people of German-Jewish descent English scenic designers Broadway set designers Opera designers Alumni of the Slade School of Fine Art LGBT Jews LGBT people from England People educated at Hawtreys Camoufleurs British Jews British Jewish families British Army personnel of World War II Royal Engineers officers 20th-century LGBT people