Sir Osbert Lancaster (4 August 1908 – 27 July 1986) was an English cartoonist, architectural historian, stage designer and author. He was known for his cartoons in the British press, and for his lifelong work to inform the general public about good buildings and architectural heritage.
The only child of a prosperous family, Lancaster was educated at Charterhouse School and Lincoln College, Oxford; at both he was an undistinguished scholar. From an early age he was determined to be a professional artist and designer, and studied at leading art colleges in Oxford and London. While working as a contributor to The Architectural Review in the mid-1930s, Lancaster published the first of a series of books on architecture, aiming to simultaneously amuse the general reader and demystify the subject. Several of the terms he coined as labels for architectural styles have gained common usage, including "Pont Street Dutch" and "Stockbroker's Tudor", and his books have continued to be regarded as important works of reference on the subject.
In 1938 Lancaster was invited to contribute topical cartoons to The Daily Express. He introduced the single column-width cartoon popular in the French press but not until then seen in British papers. Between 1939 and his retirement in 1981 he drew about 10,000 of these "pocket cartoons", which made him a nationally known figure. He developed a cast of regular characters, led by his best-known creation, Maudie Littlehampton, through whom he expressed his views on the fashions, fads and political events of the day.
From his youth, Lancaster wanted to design for the theatre, and in 1951 he was commissioned to create costumes and scenery for a new ballet, Pineapple Poll. Between then and the early 1970s he designed new productions for the Royal Ballet, Glyndebourne, D'Oyly Carte, the Old Vic and the West End. His productivity declined in his later years, when his health began to fail. He died at his London home in Chelsea, aged 77. His diverse career, honoured by a knighthood in 1975, was celebrated by an exhibition at the Wallace Collection marking the centenary of his birth and titled Cartoons and Coronets: The Genius of Osbert Lancaster.
Life and career
Early years Lancaster was born at 79 Elgin Crescent in London in 1908, the only child of Robert Lancaster (1880–1917) and his wife, Clare Bracebridge, née Manger.Lucie-Smith, p. 184 His paternal grandfather, Sir William Lancaster, rose from modest beginnings to become the chief executive of the Prudential Assurance Company, Lord of the manor of East Winch, Norfolk, and a philanthropist in the field of education."Sir W. J. Lancaster", The Times, 2 March 1929, p. 14 Osbert's mother was an artist, known for her paintings of flowers, who had exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy;Osbert Lancaster , British Cartoon Archive, University of Kent, retrieved 20 January 2018 his father was a publisher,1911 Census, Ancestry Institution, Wellcome Library, retrieved 30 January 2018 who volunteered for the army on the outbreak of the First World War, was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Norfolk Regiment, and was killed at the Battle of Arras in April 1917.Boston, p. 26; and Robert Lancaster , Commonwealth War Graves Commission, retrieved 2 February 2018
Elgin Crescent, Notting Hill, where Lancaster was born and raised, was an upper-middle class area. The family maintained a staff of servants, including a cook and a nurse.Lancaster (1963), p. 13 Such was the mixed nature of London in the early years of the 20th century that a short distance away were the deprived and dangerous Notting Dale and the Portobello Road, where, as Lancaster recalled in his 1953 memoirs, it was said to be impossible for a well-dressed man to walk and emerge intact.Lancaster (1963), p. 2 From an early age Lancaster was aware of the variety of classes, nationalities, and social attitudes around him.Lancaster (1963), pp. 12–15
In 1918 Lancaster was sent to St Ronan's preparatory school, Worthing. The régime at the school leaned heavily towards sport, in which he was neither interested nor proficient. The headmaster, Stanley Harris, was a celebrated amateur footballer and occasional first class cricketer, but he was reasonably tolerant of Lancaster's disdain for games, and on the whole Lancaster enjoyed his time at the school. His education there was, he later commented, of more importance to him than anything he learned later in his school and university career.Knox, p. 16 He left St Ronan's in 1921, aged thirteen, and went to Charterhouse, where his father and uncles had all been sent.Knox, p. 18 There he was shocked by the bullying and bad language,Boston, pp. 44–45 but in addition to its sporty, philistine "bloods",Boston, pp. 44 and 47 the school had an intellectual and aesthetic tradition. Lancaster's biographer Richard Boston writes, "The hearty Baden-Powell, for example, was offset by Ralph Vaughan Williams and Robert Graves, while talented Carthusian artists had included Thackeray, Leech, Lovat Fraser and Max Beerbohm".Boston, p. 47 The art master, P.J.("Purple")Johnson, encouraged Lancaster, insisting that a sound technique was a prerequisite for effective self-expression in drawing or painting; in that respect the boy's time at the school was valuable, though otherwise the headmaster found him "irretrievably gauche... a sad disappointment".Boston, p. 46 Lancaster shared Beerbohm's view that being an old boy of the school was more pleasurable than being a pupil there.
At the age of seventeen Lancaster passed his final school examinations and gained entrance to Lincoln College, Oxford, to study history. He persuaded his mother to allow him to leave Charterhouse at once, giving him several months between school and university, during which he enrolled on a course of life classes at the Byam Shaw School of Art in London.Knox, p. 22 In October 1926 he started at Oxford. There, as at Charterhouse, he found two camps in which some students chose to group themselves: the "hearties" presented themselves as aggressively heterosexual and anti-intellectual; the "aesthetes" had a largely homosexual membership.Catto, Evans and McConica, pp. 98–99 Lancaster followed his elder contemporary Kenneth Clark in being contentedly heterosexual but nonetheless one of the aesthetes, and he was accepted as a leading member of their set.Clark, pp. 73–74; and Boston, p. 54 He cultivated the image of an Edwardian dandy, with large moustache, a monocle and check suits, modelling his persona to a considerable degree on Beerbohm, whom he admired greatly.Boston, pp. 53–54 He also absorbed some characteristics of the Oxford don Maurice Bowra; Lancaster's friend James Lees-Milne commented, "Bowra's influence over Osbert was marked, to the extent that he adopted the guru's booming voice, explosive emphasis of certain words and phrases, and habit in conversation of regaling his audiences with rehearsed witticisms and gossip." Lancaster's undergraduate set included Stephen Spender, Randolph Churchill, and most importantly John Betjeman, who became a close friend and lifelong influence.Boston, p. 59
Lancaster tried rowing with the Oxford University Boat Club, but quickly discovered he was no more suited to that than he had been to field games at school.Knox, p. 25 He joined the Oxford University Dramatic Society (OUDS), acted in supporting roles, designed programme covers, wrote, and choreographed.Knox, p. 27 He contributed prose and drawings to Isis and Cherwell magazines, engaged in student pranks, staged an exhibition of his pictures, attended life classes, and became established as a major figure in the Oxonian social scene.Knox, pp. 27–28 and 33–34 All these diversions led him to neglect his academic work. He had made things more difficult for himself by switching from the history course to English after his first year, a decision he regretted once confronted with the rigours of compulsory Anglo-Saxon, which he found incomprehensible.Knox, p. 33 Making a belated effort, he extended his studies from the usual three years to four, and graduated with a fourth-class degree in 1930.Knox, pp. 33–34
1930s
Lancaster's family believed that art was a suitable hobby but an unacceptable profession; they agreed that the best career for him would be the law. He dutifully attended a crammer and joined the Middle Temple, but repeatedly failed his law examinations. His studies were abruptly bought to an end by his health. A chest ailment was diagnosed as possibly tubercular, and he was sent to a sanatorium in Switzerland. After three months he was declared fit, and following a holiday in Venice – a lifelong love and aesthetic influence – he returned to England in 1931. He abandoned all thoughts of becoming a lawyer and enrolled full-time at the Slade School of Art in London.Knox, p. 35
At the Slade, Lancaster enjoyed most of his classes, but particularly those in stage design run by Vladimir Polunin, who had been Diaghilev's chief scene-painter and had worked with Picasso.Haskell and Clarke, p. 149; and Boston, p. 73 Among Polunin's students was Karen Harris, daughter of the banker Sir Austin Harris. Lancaster fell in love with her;Boston, p. 73 his feelings were reciprocated, but she was only seventeen and her parents thought her too young to marry. At first they were cautious about Lancaster's suitability as a husband and provider, but they came to approve of him. He and Karen were married in June 1933.Boston, p. 78 They had two children: Cara (born 1934) and William (born 1938); the former became a stage manager, the latter, an anthropologist.Smith, David. "Timeless appeal of the classic joke" , The Observer, 23 November 2008; Boston, p. 41; and Knox, p. 47
Lancaster earned a living as a freelance artist, producing advertising posters, Christmas cards, book illustrations and a series of murals for a hotel. In 1934 he secured a regular post with The Architectural Review, which was owned by a family friend and of which Betjeman was assistant editor.Knox, p. 38 The magazine had a reputation as "the mouthpiece of the modernist movement", employing leading proponents such as Ernő Goldfinger and Nikolaus Pevsner.Boston, Richard. "A few home truths for Dr Pevsner", The Guardian, 18 November 1991, p. 36 Despite describing the Bauhaus style as "balls", Lancaster was not anti-modernist, but he joined Betjeman and Robert Byron in advancing the countervailing value of more traditional architecture.Knox, p. 39 Chief among his many activities for The Architectural Review was reviewing books, particularly those on art. His biographer James Knox comments that Lancaster's taste was already assured, appreciating the diverse gifts of contemporary artists including Edward Burra, Giorgio de Chirico, Edward Wadsworth and Paul Nash.Knox, p. 40