S.R.Badmin and the English Landcape By Chris Beetles
I chose this lovely book as the picture on the cover reminded me of when I used to live in Kent. It is about landscape artist Stanley Roy Badmin of whom, I imagine, some of you may have heard. His works have appeared on greeting cards, calendars, in copies of the Readers Digest and Radio Times magazines and much more.
The book has been written by Chris Beetles, a London art dealer, who has put together 44 of the artist’s watercolours plus some etchings. Chris Beetles has been a leading authority on S.R. Badmin for the past thirty years and the book provides an informative history of Badmin’s career and his development as a prominent etcher and fine artist.
For background information, Stanley Badmin was born in 1906 and lived in south-east London. He always loved the countryside and, as a child, used to go with his family on many visits to Somerset and the Cotswolds from his home in Sydenham.
When he was twenty years old he held his first one-man show at the Twenty-One Gallery. The Twenty-One Gallery was renowned at the time for leading artists and dealers in the etching market to display their works and, at the age of twenty-five, Badmin was made an Associate of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers which was a great achievement for him.
He studied at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts and the Royal College of Art, London and became one of the youngest ever associate members of the Royal Watercolour Society at the age of twenty-six, which was yet another great achievement.
Badmin wrote and illustrated three books for Puffin, the childrens imprint of Penguin Books, one of which, Trees in Britain published in1943, has been described as “one of the most beautifully illustrated books of the 20th century”.
His work was also commissioned by Shell and he worked on advertising art and book illustrations for the then popular Shell Guides series during the 1950’s.
Over the next 30 years, Badmin lived in “Suburbia” as he called it. In the book there is an etching that he did that is typical of how things were and still are today. Not a lot has changed, although the front gardens have probably been paved over to make way for off road parking now.
He married twice, in 1930 to Margaret and again in 1950 to Rosaline. He had a daughter, Joanna and a son, Patrick from his first marriage and then another daughter, Galea with his second wife, Rosaline.
At the end of the book there is a list of all his Royal Watercolour Society Exhibits starting in 1932 and going all the way up to 1984. This is followed by a Chronology listing all the major events in his life.
There is also a “Catalogue Raisonne” which provides a comprehensive listing of all his etchings, from 1928 to his last etching, “Oxfordshire Cottage”, in 1936.
As you flick through the book, you will see that on the opposite page to the watercolour plate there is a descriptive text about the work, along with the dates when the artwork was exhibited or published.
Some of Badmin’s work is quite humorous as in “Autumn Wedding at Findon”. Apparently, when he sat down to begin his work the area was empty and quiet, but after a while people started arriving, so he had to move as he got caught up in the wedding. The watercolour would go on to be a “wedding card” best seller published by Royle, a printing firm and fine art publisher who became one of Britain’s largest manufacturers of greetings cards and calendars at the time.
Badmin liked to spend time in an area if he was going to paint there, but one picture he painted, “Spring comes to a Cotswold Village”, is not a real village. He picked things out from other villages, for example The Mill which is from Naunton, to create the artwork as you can see below.
All the pictures of his prints in the book are just so quintessentially English. Nothing seems to have changed to this day – this print of Clovelly is instantly recognisable with the houses perched on the hill and the harbour.
Badmin’s family played an important part in his life and in some of his illustrations he sneaked in pictures of his family members. The picture below is of his son in the foreground ice skating and the other of his daughter and wife in their garden in London before they moved to Sussex. After an incredibly long and successful career, he spent a long and happy retirement in the South Downs and passed away in Chichester in 1989.
On a personal note, I prefer the watercolours to the etchings as I find them a bit too dark and foreboding, but that is personal preference. I think the pictures here are wonderful and it would be great if I could find some to buy to hang on my wall.
As there are so many marvellous pictures in the book, I will end with one called Christmas Week in Trafalgar Square which seems fitting for the time of year.
Contributed by Lisa
(Published 12th Dec 2023)
