George Martin Battersby (12February 19143April 1982)"Martin Battersby: A Biography" by

Philippe Garner Philippe Daniel Garner (born March 1949) is a British expert on photography- Garner joined Sotheby's Auctioneers and in 1971 took charge of the Art Nouveau and Art Deco department. The same year he held the first specialist auction of photography ...

in ''The Decorative Twenties'', New York: Walker & Co., 1969, pp. 7–21. was a British ''

trompe-l'œil ''Trompe-l'œil'' ( , ; ) is an artistic term for the highly realistic optical illusion of three-dimensional space and objects on a two-dimensional surface. ''Trompe l'oeil'', which is most often associated with painting, tricks the viewer into ...

'' artist and theatrical

set decorator The set decorator is the head of the set decoration department in the film and television industry, responsible for selecting, designing, fabricating, and sourcing the "set dressing" elements of each set in a Feature Film, Television, or New Media ...

who became an expert on

Art Nouveau Art Nouveau (; ) is an international style of art, architecture, and applied art, especially the decorative arts. The style is known by different names in different languages: in German, in Italian, in Catalan, and also known as the Modern ...

and the style of the 1920s and 1930s.

Early career

Battersby was born in London. His father was a retail jeweller but Martin was drawn to the visual arts and he first trained as a draughtsman at Gill & Reigate. Later, he worked at

Liberty's Liberty, commonly known as Liberty's, is a luxury department store in London, England. It is located on Great Marlborough Street in the West End of London. The building spans from Carnaby Street on the East to Kingly Street on the West, where ...

and then studied acting at

RADA The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA; ) is a drama school in London, England, that provides vocational conservatoire training for theatre, film, television, and radio. It is based in the Bloomsbury area of Central London, close to the Senat ...

. His stage career was eclipsed by an interest in set design and painting and his first commission was for the

Old Vic Old or OLD may refer to: Places *Old, Baranya, Hungary * Old, Northamptonshire, England *Old Street station, a railway and tube station in London (station code OLD) *OLD, IATA code for Old Town Municipal Airport and Seaplane Base, Old Town, Ma ...

production of ''Hamlet'' with Laurence Olivier in 1937. This was followed by commissions for the

Royal Shakespeare Company The Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) is a major British theatre company, based in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. The company employs over 1,000 staff and produces around 20 productions a year. The RSC plays regularly in London, St ...

at Stratford. A 1956 profile in ''

The Sketch ''The Sketch'' was a British illustrated weekly journal. It ran for 2,989 issues between 1 February 1893 and 17 June 1959. It was published by the Illustrated London News Company and was primarily a society magazine with regular features on roy ...

'' has a page portrait by Hans Wild. The writer states: "Battersby assured me that he has never in his life attended an art school, or even had any art lessons. He is entirely self-taught.""Biographies in paint" by Maureen Williamson in ''The Sketch'', 29 August 1956, pp. 206-7

Cecil Beaton

Battersby continued to expand his experience by working in the antiques trade and buying for his own eclectic collection. In the 1940s he worked for a short time as assistant set designer to

Cecil Beaton Sir Cecil Walter Hardy Beaton, (14 January 1904 – 18 January 1980) was a British fashion, portrait and war photographer, diarist, painter, and interior designer, as well as an Oscar–winning stage and costume designer for films and the theat ...

and worked on the 1945 production of

Lady Windermere's Fan ''Lady Windermere's Fan, A Play About a Good Woman'' is a four-act comedy by Oscar Wilde, first performed on Saturday, 20 February 1892, at the St James's Theatre in London. The story concerns Lady Windermere, who suspects that her husband i ...

. He later fell out with Beaton, as he did with other collaborators.

Art

His career as an artist developed in parallel with other activities and he held his first one-man show in 1948 at the Brook Street Gallery, London. Shows on both sides of the Atlantic followed. He became a master of the ''

'' form and his work often reflected his obsessions with theatrical masks and sphinxes. Battersby also produced easel paintings and large scale

mural A mural is any piece of graphic artwork that is painted or applied directly to a wall, ceiling or other permanent substrate. Mural techniques include fresco, mosaic, graffiti and marouflage. Word mural in art The word ''mural'' is a Spani ...

s and enjoyed the support of a wide group of patrons in the 1950s and 1960s. His first mural commission was from Lady Diana Duff Cooper in 1950, and other patrons included Audrey Pleydell-Bouverie, the Countess of Kenmare, Denis Martineau (for whom Battersby did seven panels at

Mompesson House Mompesson House is an 18th-century house located in the Cathedral Close, Salisbury, Wiltshire, England. The house is Grade I listed. and has been in the ownership of the National Trust since 1975. History The Mompesson family had lived in Wilts ...

Evelyn Waugh Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh (; 28 October 1903 – 10 April 1966) was an English writer of novels, biographies, and travel books; he was also a prolific journalist and book reviewer. His most famous works include the early satires ''Decli ...

and

John Profumo John Dennis Profumo, CBE,( ; 30 January 1915 – 9 March 2006) was a British politician whose career ended in 1963 after a sexual relationship with the 19-year-old model Christine Keeler in 1961. The scandal, which became known as the Profumo a ...

, as a present for his wife,

Valerie Hobson Babette Louisa Valerie Hobson (14 April 1917 – 13 November 1998) was a British actress whose film career spanned the 1930s to the early 1950s. Her second husband was John Profumo, a British government minister who became the subject of the Pro ...

Later life

From the 1960s onwards he began to develop his reputation as a collector, connoisseur and historian of the visual arts, decorating his home in Brighton in a typically lavish and eclectic way. He ran a boutique and printing studio named ''Sphinx Studio'' and in 1969, at the instigation of John Morley, his collection formed the basis for one of the first retrospectives of 1920s style when ''The Jazz Age'' was held. The exhibition was opened by

Erté Romain de Tirtoff (23 November 1892 – 21 April 1990) was a Russian-born French artist and designer known by the pseudonym Erté, from the French pronunciation of his initials (, EHR TEH). He was a 20th-century artist and designer in an a ...

. In 1971, Battersby's partner, Paul Watson, committed suicide. In 1978, Battersby severed links with Brighton and his former interests, and moved to Fulham, London, where he continued to paint in preparation for a new exhibition that was to be held in 1982. However, before the exhibition began, he died in Lewes.

Publications

*''The World of Art Nouveau'', 1966. *''Art Nouveau'', 1969. *''The Decorative Twenties'', New York: Walker & Co., 1969. *''The Decorative Thirties'', 1971. *''Art Deco Fashion'', 1974. *''Trompe L'OEil'', 1974.

References

External links

*
A ‘New Look’ Interior: Martin Battersby’s decoration for Lady Diana Cooper

The Jazz Age, An Entertainmen
t, poster at the V&A {{DEFAULTSORT:Battersby, Martin 1914 births 1982 deaths 20th-century British painters British male painters British set decorators Painters from London Trompe-l'œil artists Art Nouveau painters 20th-century British male artists