James Boswell (artist)

"For the biographer of Samuel Johnson, see James Boswell."

James Edward Buchanan Boswell (June 9, 1906 - April 15, 1971) was a New Zealand-born British painter and socialist.

Life

Boswell was born in Westport, South Island, the son of a Scottish born schoolmaster, Edward Blair Buchanan Boswell, and his New Zealand born wife Ida Fair. He was educated at grammar school in Auckland and the Elam School of Art before coming to London in 1925 to continue his training at the Royal College of Art until 1929. Although he was dismissed twice from the RCA painting school over conflicts with its then anti-modern stance, his early works were accepted by the London Group, with whom he exhibited from 1927 to 1932.

He joined the Communist Party in 1932, switching from oil painting to illustration and establishing himself as a left-wing artist in the 1930s. He was a co-founder of the Marxist and anti-Fascist pressure group, the International Organization of Artists for Revolutionary Proletarian Art (later called Artists' International Association - the AIA), and contributed Hogarthian satirical prints to the "Left Review", for which he was art editor, and "Daily Worker".

Around 1933 he married the artist Elizabeth (Betty) Soars. In 1936 he joined the publicity department of the Asiatic Petroleum Company (part of the Shell corporation) though continuing his socialist and anti-war involvement, such as exhibiting with the AIA during the Spanish Civil War.

During World War II, Boswell was called up in 1941, initially training in Scotland as a radiographer in the Royal Army Medical Corps. Although in contact with War Artists' Advisory Committee, which bought some of his work, he was not officially commissioned due to his Communist Party membership. From 1942-1943 he served in Iraq, rising to the rank of major. [http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/10/30/news/boswell.php Chronicles of war, from an antiwar artist] , Mary Blume, "International Herald Tribune", October 30, 2006]

After the war, Boswell returned briefly to Shell, leaving in 1947. He subsequently worked as art editor of "Lilliput" magazine until 1950; wrote a book on art in society, "The Artist's Dilemma"; worked with Basil Spence as a mural painter for the 1951 Festival of Britain; designed film posters for Ealing Studios; [ [http://arts.guardian.co.uk/filmandmusic/story/0,,1982576,00.html The secret artist of Ealing Studios] , Andrew Pulver, "The Guardian", January 5, 2007] and edited the house journal of Sainsbury's until 1971. He also designed the Labour Party campaign for the successful 1964 general election.

He separated from his wife in 1966, and thereafter lived with Ruth Abel, who in 1967 changed her name to Boswell by deed poll. He died of cancer in London in 1971.

In 2006, Tate Britain held a centenary display of his work and The British Museum an exhibition of war drawings in their archives. In that year, Muswell Press published his war drawings from London, Scotland and Iraq: 'James Boswell: Unofficial War Artist', with text by William Feaver.

Works

He made many drawings of life in Britain during the 1930's and perceptive sketches of life in war-time Britain.

His pre-war satirical style has been described as "attractively pugnacious" and compared to the work of the German artists George Grosz and Otto Dix and to British artist/illustrators such as Edward Ardizzone. It was an influence on later artists such as Ronald Searle and Paul Hogarth."ODNB", main reference cited above] Although much of his work was political satire aimed at exposing class injustice, he also produced work simply portraying everyday life, such as his 1939 series of London lithographs. [ [http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?cgroupid=999999961&workid=26936&tabview=text&texttype=10 The Cinema] , Heather Birchall, Tate Collection]

Despite not being an official war artist, he is known for his scenes of life in the armed services, including his overseas service in Iraq. These, now in the Tate, The British Museum and Imperial War Museum, are said to magnificently evoke the atmosphere, boredom and solitude of military life. While in Iraq he also produced a series of fierce surreal sketches graphically illustrating his view of war more symbolically: [ [http://www.tate.org.uk/tateetc/issue7/archivespecial.htm "When you a paint a picture you are afraid of giving it your life - the life where you are dreaming realities"] , "Tate etc" feature with examples from Boswell's Iraq sketchbooks]

"a bestial farce conducted by bulls. These Orwellian animals, often dressed in generals' uniforms, heave their obese bulk through page after page. They ride on the backs of exhausted Tommies, pause with a watering-can to sprinkle a flower-pot containing the grotesquely dismembered skeleton of a soldier and sit on a hideous pile of corpses and ruined buildings while they type out a mass of documents which sail ridiculously into the sky. Sometimes they play at doctors and press a telescope to their ears in order to inspect a truncated, headless body held up with callous unconcern by two horned orderlies. And then they turn into bespectacled priests who ram a huge graveyard cross into a hapless soldier's mouth. The flow of imagery is as prodigal as it is remorseless, suggesting that Boswell treated these sketchbooks as a cathartic outlet for all his deepest loathing of war" [Richard Cork, catalogue, Boswell retrospective exhibition, Nottingham University, 1976]

In later life he settled into painting abstract oils and landscapes.

References

*Julian Freeman, ‘Boswell, James Edward Buchanan (1906–1971)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/57139, accessed 21 Nov 2006]

External links

* [http://www.jboswell.info/index.html James Boswell Home Page] , tribute site
* [http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ArtistWorks?cgroupid=999999961&artistid=787&page=1 James Boswell] , Tate Collection
* [http://collections.tepapa.govt.nz/Search.aspx?__VIEWSTATE=%2FwEPDwUKMTAwNTY3MzM4MGRk2VIBUl0c8JJ0OrrEMBcNzXoTvg8%3D&term=James+Boswell&search=Search Works by or featuring James Boswell in the collection of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa]