Sir Frank Brangwyn dies

GRAND OLD MAN OF CATHOLIC ARTISTS
'Catholic Herald' Reporter
S"'FRANK BRANGWYN, R.A., who died on Monday at the age of 89, was the Grand Old Man of British Catholic artists, and one of the oldest painters of high international reputation.
" Catholic artist " was a term that could be applied to him very exactly; for the spirit of Catholicism inspired all his work, and not merely those
many pictures which dealt directly with religious themes.
It was equally apparent in scores of his easel pictures in national collections all over the world, and in huge murals in public buildings of numerous cities, in which he showed men at their work—usually heavy work, lifting, carrying, tending powerful machines. milling, ploughing. sailing ships. The beauty and dignity he found in their movements and translated into hit pictures made them a testimony that " to work is to pray."
He admired and liked all honest workmen and craftsmen, and as a young man, deliberately chose to live with them, first among the fishermen of Sandwich, on the Kent coast, and later as a sailor before the mast in a coastal barge, the Garibaldi.
Some of the best of his pictures with labour as their theme are the four large murals he painted for the Rockefeller Centre, New York. The Royal Exchange, in London. also has a Brangwyn panel, " Modern Commerce."
He liked, too, to paint for churches. feeling that what he did for them was as much a work of devotion as a work of art. Of a church he once said : The church is sanctified by hundreds of thousands of people who have prayed there and created an atmosphere of sanctity. The church is the most necessary thing in everyday life."
Many churches and chapels in Britain and overseas have panels by Brangwyn. Among the finest are those which are perhaps hest known to English Catholics nowadays, the Stations-of the Cross that were installed in 1935 in the chapel of Campion Hall, Oxford. These were a gift from the artist. He made a similar gift further afield— to a mission for lepers in South Africa.
Sir Frank had dropped from the public eye for many years before his death, retiring with all his honours to Ditchling, in Sussex, where he died. But for decades he had been one of the greatest figures in the world of art, though somewhat less appreciated in his own country than in America and on the Continent, where he had been early acclaimed as perhaps the finest decorator of his day. He held artistic awards of most European countries, had been a Royal Academician since 1919, and four years ago was the first artist to be given a one-man show by the Royal Academy. He was knighted in 1941.
He was born at Bruges. Belgium, and began studying painting at South Kensington and under William Morris, to whom he was apprenticed at the age of 15.