Lloyd’s Register of Shipping (M2619)

Murals

Pastel sketch for Pottery porters.

Brangwyn gained the commission to paint murals for the Committee Luncheon Room through Thomas Lane Devitt, Chairman of Lloyd’s Register.

The windowless Luncheon Room had dark, oak panelled walls, and a barrel vaulted ceiling with a long central skylight for which Brangwyn painted 10 panels. He concentrated on the commerce which had provided Lloyd’s with its wealth – the goods he had probably seen at St Katherine’s Dock and the Upper and Lower Pool: fruit, rugs, beer, tea, sugar, meat, pottery, coal and timber, were shown in the process of being unloaded by porters. 

The Studio critic commented: ‘I like these “hefty” men: I like these “jolly” bananas, and pots, and baskets: I like that hunk of frozen meat, and that bright yellow carpet, and that fierce red coat:  I like the contrast between the pure, deep blue and the light, bright colours of the grouped figures: I like the smoking chimneys: I like the pumpkins.’

The panels were exhibited in the Brangwyn room at the Ghent International Exhibition in 1913 together with a newly made lunette (which is now in Mildura Art Centre). Brangwyn designed the complete interior, tables, chairs, carpet.

I’m not convinced that the smart city men enjoyed looking at these blue collar workers during their lunch breaks and in time the panels needed cleaning due to the dominance of cigarette and pipe smoking and the general pollution.  Unfortunately the Lloyd’s restorer sealed them with yacht varnish – not a good idea.  The paintings deteriorated, they were taken down and apparently rolled up and placed in the basement from where they miraculously disappeared although Pevsner wrongly notes:  ‘A second-floor room preserves remains of Brangwyn’s paintings of Dockside Labour, 1908-1914’

There were eleven panels representing dockside scenes.

Lunette 243.8 x 670.6 cm (8ft x 22ft)

4 rectangular panels 137.2 x 121.9cm (4ft6in x 4ft)

4 rectangular panels 137.2 x 243.8cm (4ft6in x 8ft)

2 rectangular panels 137.2 x 91.4cm (4ft6in x 3ft)

Panels entitled: Meat Porters, Pottery Porters, Timber Porters, Beer Porters, Curios and Coal, Fruit and Wool, Rug Porters, Fruit Porters, Tea and Sugar Porters (2No) and Boiler Makers (lunette)

Literature: Galloway, 1962 p71. Furst, 1924 p90-94. Shaw-Sparrow, 1915, p135-6. Shaw-Sparrow, Prints & Drawings by Frank Brangwyn, John Lane, The Bodley Head London 1919 p208-211. The Studio, p3-13 Vol 59, June 1913, Siordet, ‘Mr Brangwyn’s Tempera Paintings at the Ghent Exhibition’. Clare Willsdon, Mural painting in Britain 1840-1940, Oxford University Press 2000 p346-348. Rodney Brangwyn, Brangwyn, William Kimber London 1978 p134-140. Kathy Davis (Ed), Building for the Future, Lloyd’s Register p23. Martin O’Rourke, Of Art and Architecture, Lloyd’s Register of Shipping, 1995 p10, 28. Simon Bradley/Pevsner, Buildings of England: London 1, Penguin 1997 p120, 315,316.

Illustrated: Brangwyn, Work, Berlin Photographic Company London 1914. 100 copies made of the pastels sketches for the ten panels, 5 for presentation, 70 numbered, 25 numbered and signed. The Portfolio measures 40.5x52cm, individual images as follows: Tea and Sugar 21×36, Timber 21×25, Fruit 20×21, Curios and Coal 20×33, Fruit Porters 20×29, Pottery 20.5×24.5, Meat 20×28.3, Beer 20×36, Boilermakers semi circular w45 (all cm).

The Studio, 2-12 Vol 59, June 1913, Siordet, ‘Mr Brangwyn’s Tempera Paintings at the Ghent Exhibition’. Clare Willsdon, Mural painting in Britain 1840-1940, Oxford University Press 2000 p350 cartoon for Dockside Labour (Boiler-Makers). Martin O’Rourke, Of Art and Architecture, Lloyd’s Register of Shipping 1995 p28.