Sir Frank Brangwyn, R.A. (1867 – 1956) was born in Bruges, Belgium and died at his home in Sussex, England. But, Brangwyn’s ancestry was Welsh: his father, William Curtis Brangwyn had been born in Buckinghamshire to a Welsh family and married Eleanor Griffiths, who was from Brecon. Brangwyn’s Welsh heritage, coupled with his international renown, is responsible for the presence of the Brangwyn Panels in Swansea’s Guildhall today.
Brangwyn’s career was certainly illustrious. He had studied with William Morris (1882-84) and the architect and designer Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo – both seminal figures in the Arts and Crafts movement. He was commissioned to work for Siegfried Bing’s celebrated Galeries L’Art Nouveau in 1895. He made over 80 prints and posters of the First World War and was elected a full Royal Academician in 1919. He was one of Britain’s most prolific and versatile artists; his oeuvre including paintings, drawings, prints, murals, ceramics, carpets and book illustrations as well as designs for stained glass windows, furniture, buildings and interiors. During his lifetime Brangwyn produced over 12,000 artworks. The Brangwyn Panels (also known as the British Empire Panels), comprising 16 monumental paintings, are popularly considered his most significant achievement. So, the story of their arrival in Swansea is often presented to local audiences (and visitors) as a victory for Wales; a symbolic return of a son the soil.
After all, they were initially commissioned for the Royal Gallery in the House of Lords and were hotly pursued by both Cardiff and Swansea. The ensuing battle ended with Swansea winning the bid: the building of the new Guildhall was underway and the city council proposed raising the Assembly Hall ceiling to 13.4 metres to accommodate the Panels. This tipped the scales in Swansea’s favour. With great pomp and excitement, the Assembly Hall was renamed the Brangwyn Hall – in honour of the Panels – and inaugurated with the rest of the building in October 1934 by the Duke of Kent. In 1937, it was visited by King George VI.
Following this purchase, Brangwyn gifted Swansea the preparatory drawings and studies for the Panels – all of which are under the care of Glynn Vivian Art Gallery. These sketches and small paintings, teeming with delicate foliage, flora and fauna are fabulous natural studies of the lands that Brangwyn travelled to (as well as the animals he visited regularly in London Zoo). For Brangwyn had an enduring Romance with Asia, the Middle East and Moorish Spain that earned him accolades in America and Europe. Art historian Libby Horner argues that he was amongst the most revered artists of the 1900s for his merging of the so-called ‘decorative arts’ with fine art traditions.1 This holistic approach to art-making was inspired by his voyages. Brangwyn sailed the seas for much of 1880s and 1890s, visiting Spain, Japan, North & South Africa and Istanbul. Influenced by the Continent’s fascination with Orientalist paintings, he made vivid-hued paintings of Egypt, Turkey and Morocco, which he visited in 1893. His celebrated painting Market in Morocco was purchased by the French government in 1895. In 1896, he illustrated the six-volume reprint of Edward William Lane’s translation of the Arabian Nights. In 1917 he collaborated with the Japanese artist Yoshijiro (Mokuchu) Urushibara on a series of woodblock prints; making friends with the Japanese industrial magnate Kojiro Matsutaka, who became his patron.
The studies for the Empire Panels – some of which have been reproduced and can be seen on the walls of the atrium surrounding the Brangwyn Hall – show the culturally diverse sources of Brangwyn’s aesthetic inspiration: based on botanical studies, their curling fronds and iridescent foliage are also reminiscent of Monet’s famous Waterlilies; of Art Nouveau’s curlicues; of Islamic friezes, of William Morris’s floral wallpaper designs – and of the Indo-Persian miniatures that inspired Morris. There is even a hint in of Urushibara’s herbaceous woodcuts. The watchful jungle-cats, jewel-coloured peacocks and curling-tusked elephants that stalk the artworks recall the characters in Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book. As such, these preparatory drawings and paintings represent a formidable, aesthetically plural achievement. The Empire Panels rely on their lush explorations.
Yet, the Panels themselves make a very different impact. No doubt inspired by Brangwyn’s belief that murals – unlike paintings – were meant to be decorative above all, they have the flattened, repetitive quality of wallpaper. Their sheer scale makes their presentation of the ‘peoples of Empire’ in various states of undress – all jumbled together so that it is impossible to tell where India starts, Canada begins or ‘Siam’ ends – rather disturbing at close range. Unsurprisingly (and notwithstanding the official narrative surrounding their display at the Guildhall) they have been dogged with controversy from the start. The House of Lords’ reasons for rejecting them in 1930 because they were teeming with “tits and bananas” comes to mind.2 They hardly sit comfortably with current sensibilities either. How can one help but notice the bare bodies and servile positions ascribed to the ‘native’ females? In the light of BlackLivesMatter and the urgent need to ‘decolonise’ the past, one has to agree with young activist Stevie MacKinnon Smith’s assessment that the Panels’ regressive colonial narrative needs to be addressed; that “their continued display without this acknowledgment is problematic”.3
Whilst it is true that we must acknowledge that the Panels are deeply “problematic”, it is just as important that we see them in the context of their creation. In fact, one could argue that in all the conflicting emotions they generate (pride at Swansea’s Imperial heritage on the one hand, shock at their misplaced ‘Romanticism’ on the other) they are seminal because of their flaws. For, they (re)present the tangled tale of Empire – and Wales’ complicated relationship to it.
Like the Panels, Brangwyn’s own place within the narrative of British art history was always precarious. While he was feted in Japan, Italy, Australia, Canada and even New York (commissioned by JD Rockefeller Junior, alongside Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, to decorate the Rockefeller Centre), British critics were never fully convinced. For instance, although Brangwyn produced a plethora of posters and portraits during the First World War, he was not an official war artist. His poster Put Strength in the Final Blow: Buy War Bonds caused outrage in both Britain and Germany. If, the Kaiser himself is said to have put a price on Brangwyn’s head after seeing the image, it was equally noxious to the British public.4 According to art historian Enora Le Pocreau – citing Libby Horner – “with the commission of the British Empire panels”, Brangwyn saw a chance to rejuvenate his art and “reach the pinnacle of his career” in the “symbolic heart of British power.”5 But, if Brangwyn was playing to belong to the Old Boys Club of British-ness, he lost. The Empire Panels were to prove the culmination of his troubled trajectory.
In 1926, Brangwyn was commissioned by the Irish Lord Iveagh to paint two Panels for the Royal Gallery in The Houses of Parliament to commemorate those who had been killed in the First World War. Brangwyn painted two dark scenes, life-size images of soldiers advancing into combat, flanked by a British tank. However, the Lords regarded the works as far too depressing. In 1928, they refused to accept them – and the Panels were finally acquired by Cardiff, in whose National Museum Wales they currently reside. In their stead, Lord Iveagh commissioned Brangwyn to produce another series, this time with a view to celebrating the British Empire. The resulted were 16 works covering 3,000 square feet: The British Empire Panels. Unfortunately for Brangwyn, Lord Iveagh had died in the five years it took him to complete his commission. Devoid of his protector, they were ultimately rejected. If Brangwyn’s initial vision was too sad, the second was too cheerful – and, possibly, too raunchy. He seemed doomed to miss his mark.
So far, art historians have tended to gloss over the traumatic birth of the Brangwyn Panels – and have sidestepped the moral implications of their figurative content: the busty damsels and sweating labourers of the erstwhile Commonwealth who parade their wares for an Imperial gaze. Le Pocreau argues: “Brangwyn paints the idea of an Empire without a beginning or an end, eternal, where the sun never sets. He goes back to nature in order to eliminate any social divisions… [to] celebrate nature in its diversity and its infinite richness.”6 The comment might strike one as itself a bit rich – given that this “diversity” seems to depend on presenting the colonised as if they are part of nature; just as uncivilised. But if Brangwyn’s aspirations were blinkered at best, we must take it in the wistful spirit in which they were intended. Brangwyn, like the people he painted, wanted to be accepted into the Happy Family of Empire – something he had never quite achieved.
As we look at the Panels in the context of Glynn Vivian Art Gallery’s own mission to ‘decolonise’ its collection, another – more hopeful – narrative emerges. I am reminded of Black British artist Sonia Boyce’s well-loved four-panel painting, Lay Back, Keep Quiet and Think of What Made Britain So Great (1986) – created during the height of a repressive Thatcherism. The flat foliage and curling designs against which symbols of Empire are painted are curiously reminiscent of not just William Morris’s patterns (Boyce deliberately referenced Morris) but also Brangwyn’s murals. What made Britain great, Boyce implies, was its Empire – the descendants of which it refuses to acknowledge in its midst. Did Boyce know about the Brangwyn Panels? What holds true in 1986, is just as true in the Britain of today. Swansea’s Panels are a reminder of history’s repercussions and returns. If we disagree with Brangwyn’s vision, the onus falls on us to re-interpret it; to dream differently.
Written by: Dr Zehra Jumabhoy, Lecturer, History of Art, University of Bristol
1 Libby Horner & Gillian Naylor (Eds.), Frank Brangwyn, Exhi Cat. Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, 2006, p. 12
2 Lord Crawford’s 1930 article in The Daily News quoted by Enora Le Pocreau, “The British Empire Panels”, Now The Hero, https://www.nowthehero.wales/the-brangwyn-panels. Accessed 20/10/2020.
3 Stevie MacKinnon Smith, “Brangwyn’s British Empire Panels: Examining Systematic Racism in Wales’ British Art History”, Blogpost, https://www.santesdwynwenmag.com/arts-culture/blog-post-title-one-y5yaj. Accessed 20/10/20.
4 Ben MacIntyre, “The Power of War Posters”, The Times. London, 8 November 2008.
5 Enora Le Pocreau, “The British Empire Panels”, Now The Hero, Op. Cit. 6 Le Pocreau, Op. Cit.
Gallery named in new national contemporary art gallery for Wales
