Forthcoming
Eric Fraser
(1902 - 1983)
Now my boy Arry, he wants to take up with this’ ere Art,but wot I ses to im is you keep off it!’
Forthcoming
Eric Fraser (1902 - 1983)
Gouache, pen and pencil
15 x 11 1/2 (38 x 29.2 cm)
Size:
Height – 38cm
Width – 29.2cm
Born in Westminster, London, Eric Fraser attended evening classes at Westminster Technical Institute under Walter Sickert, and later studied at Goldsmiths’ College, 1919-25. In 1926, he received his first commission from the Radio Times and continued to work for this publication until his death. Fraser also executed designs and illustrations for Lilliput, for the Folio Society and for Vogue, as well designs for murals and postage stamps, all displaying that disciplined vitality that is the keynote to his illustrative style.
Illustrator and painter but especially an outstanding pen and ink draughtsman. Fraser studied at Goldsmiths College School of Art under Frederick Marriott and Edmund J Sullivan. He exhibited at the RA and SSA, but it is on the printed page that he established his reputation. He worked for the Folio Society, Golden Cockerel Press and the Radio Times. He made murals for the Navigators Memorial in Westminster Abbey and Babcock House, and a huge one in connection with the Festival of Britain in 1951. Latterly Fraser said that he preferred commissions that allowed him to use his imagination and did not limit him to representing reality. A wide-ranging exhibition of Fraser’s work, sponsored by British Gas (one of Fraser’s many industrial clients), toured the UK in the early 1990s. In 2000 the V&A organised an exhibition to mark their acquisition, directly from his family, of several hundred works.
Selected Literature: Sylvia Backmeyer, Eric Fraser, Designer and Illustrator, Lund Humphries, 1998
