The art of persuasion
QUESTION What is known of Brenda Rawnsley, the educationalist who established a programme of lending artworks to schools?
BRENDA RAWNSLEY’S School Prints series helped re-establish cultural life in Britain’s schools after World War II.
She was born Brenda Mary Hugh-Jones in Cowley, Oxford, on July 31, 1916, and lived in Egypt and Greece before attending Queen Anne’s, Caversham, Berkshire.
During the war she was a clerk at the Ministry of Economic Warfare, where she met RAF officer Derek Rawnsley, whom she married in 1941. She later joined the WAAF intelligence division, so she could join him when he was posted to Cairo.
Derek drew her into his world as an art lover. He had already founded School Prints, which hired out reproductions of f Old Masters to schools. Sadly, Derek was killed in an accident in 1943.
Brenda then served as an intelligence officer in Palestine and later at the War Office in London, predicting the flight paths of V2 rockets. She left the WAAF at the end of the war as squadron leader and picked up the reins of her husband’s venture, though she changed its direction.
Described as a charming and determined woman, Rawnsley commissioned British artists such as Henry Moore, L. S. Lowry, John Nash, Feliks Topolski, John Skeaping and David Gentleman to contribute to the series of lithographs, printed on cheap paper, which were sold cheaply to participating schools.
Fuelled by her desire for a more international representation of artists, she travelled to Europe with a portable press, persuading famous artists to join the scheme.
There is a wonderful story of how she seduced Picasso into taking part. Posing in a bathing suit and sunhat, Brenda placed herself strategically in a spot where she knew Picasso bathed every day. It took little time for Picasso to introduce himself and invite her to lunch, during which Brenda brought up the School Prints scheme and enlisted his support. The resulting lithograph, Composition, was an allegory about their encounter. With Picasso enlisted, Brenda soon also persuaded Georges Braque, Henri Matisse, Fernand Leger and Raoul Dufy to follow suit.
Sadly, although well-received by art critics and children, stuffy educationalists were less than impressed by Brenda’s French prints (considering them too avant-garde), and the School Prints scheme was dissolved in 1949.
So Brenda changed tack, lending out Pictures For Industry, which offered 700 prints for display in factories and workplaces, and Pictures In Hospitals. In 1949, she married Geoffrey Keighley and they had one son. They divorced in 1952.
In 1961, she became the first female Master of the Fine Art Trade Guild and was nominated Woman Of The Year by the Observer in 1962.
Brenda sold her business to the Patrick Seale Gallery in 1971 and moved to Stradishall in Suffolk where she worked as a librarian. She later moved to Milfordon-Sea, where she lived happily for the last 20 years of her life, before she died on June 25, 2007.
Elisa Wray, Salford.
QUESTION Which activities popular with children 50 years ago would not be allowed today?
IN THE early Seventies, seatbelts weren’t mandatory, and we used to pile into the back seat of Dad’s Rover. When I was about seven, Mum used to send me to the shops, 20 minutes’ walk, to get groceries and exchange glass bottles for pennies.
At the weekend we were dispatched to the park to amuse ourselves and would rarely return before dusk. I also remember racing downhill on the handlebars of my brother’s bike. All great fun!
Joanne Darling, Bloxwich, Staffs. MY SCHOOL’S annual excursion day in the Sixties always gave the choice of a trip to a working coal mine. We arrived at the pit and received a basic talk about safety (no lighters or matches allowed) and were then issued with a helmet and battery to fit on our belts. No hi-viz jacket or safety boots were in sight.
We descended the mineshaft in the cage the miners used. When we reached the bottom, the seam being worked was over a mile away so we got on a conveyor belt on all fours to travel to the seam, then jumped off at the end.
We saw the miners at work and were given a talk about the job. Back at the surface, we had a shower and ate in the canteen. This would likely not be allowed today, even if we had some mines open.
Malc Gilbert, Rushden, Northants. WHEN I was ten or 11 (more than 60 years ago), I made gunpowder from easily sourced ingredients. It was very smoky and burned more like firework rocket propellant than explosive. Despite my mother’s fears, I still have all my fingers.
Richard Pitt, Felixstowe, Suffolk. YOU should have seen my chemistry set in the Fifties. I could have poisoned half of the town and blown up the other half.
Stuart Power, Chichester, W. Sussex. CHILDREN probably don’t change, but the surrounding culture does. Post-war children played in bomb craters while adults smoked cigarettes in the car without a second thought.
The major difference I’m aware of is the removal of in loco parentis from schools. Attitudes to teachers and police have changed enormously.
The result has been that while children enjoyed far greater freedom in those days, they still had a greater sense of respect for, and fear of, authority.
Any adult could tell kids to calm down if they were getting too rowdy on a bus, for example, while today you are likely to get a volley of abuse — or worse.
Adult authority has largely vanished and care, control and protection of children is far less communal.
Geoffrey Allen, West Drayton, Middx.