RANDOLPH SCHWABE
(1885-1948)

"A fantastic draftsman and a wonderful illustrator," Randolph Schwabe was born in 1885, one of two sons of a Manchester cotton merchant whose father had emigrated to England from Germany in 1820. A precocious child with a passion for reading and drawing, Schwabe left school at the early age of fourteen to enroll in the Royal College of Art. His parents did not stand in his way, realizing that, in Schwabe's own words, "I would never be good at anything else." However, the enthusiastic young artist found the pedagogy tedious and stultifying. Disheartened by the experience, the young artist transferred to the Slade School of Art at the University of London, where, in the words of a friend, "he found his spiritual home."

In 1905 Schwabe, by now the winner of a Slade Scholarship, made an extended trip to the continent, studying in Paris and touring Italy. The outbreak of the First World War found Schwabe newly married, to a fellow Slade Student Gwendolyn Jones [nicknamed Birdie]. As the artist's frail physique and uncertain health disqualified him from active duty, the authorities appointed him an official war artist. [A number of his drawings are now in the Imperial War Museum.]

After the war, Schwabe's reputation grew steadily, both as a draftsman and printmaker. He supported his wife and young daughter, Alice, by teaching at the London art schools, including Camberwell and the Royal College of Art, illustrating books, and exhibiting widely, most notably at the New English Art Club and the London Group.

As an illustrator, Schwabe collaborated on projects for a number of publishers. During these years Schwabe gradually gave up painting in oils and concentrated more on pen, chalk-pencil, and watercolor, becoming widely recognized as a master in these fields. In 1943, he was elected to the Royal Watercolor Society, the same year that he was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for book-jacket design.

In 1930, Schwabe was awarded the professorship of Fine Arts at the Slade School. As a colleague remarked, "He was enthusiastic, sympathetic, and profoundly scholarly, and in spite of his gentle and hesitating manner, no one...could more clearly perceive or more telling rebuke superficial or evasive work."

To Schwabe, drawing was as natural as breathing. He drew at home and during holidays winter and summer, rain or shine, and the high quality of his own work never slackened. At the Slade, a pencil was rarely out of his hand, and after a day's work he would sit by the fire and draw his companions or the cat on the hearthrug. He drew whatever was at hand: portraits, figures, landscapes, still lifes, birds and animals, plants--the full spectrum of life--giving each subject his absorbed attention.

With his wide-ranging intellectual curiosity, Schwabe looked to the past as well as the present in charting his personal artistic course. He did not reject modernity; rather, he saw his own work as a continuation of the English tradition, specifically the English watercolor tradition that reached its apogee in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. He often used period papers for his drawings. And the link with early watercolor artists is evident when one examines Schwabe's work--the use of pen and ink, well-sharpened chalk-pencil, and the subtle washes of watercolor. The past was eminently accessible to him, seen not as something separate but as continuing into and influencing the present. Many of his drawings depict the rural scene, timeless views of country life made specific by the presence of cars and telephone poles.

Schwabe remained Slade Professor until his death in 1948, having steered the evacuation of the art school to Oxford for the duration of the war. As a teacher and artistic personality, Randolph Schwabe was able to influence an entire generation of young artists. As his friend and colleague Sir Charles Tennyson said of him, "No man was better company and no man's company was more prized by the young, for in few men's hearts did the fire of youth burn so brightly and so continuously."

Compiled from the essay "Randolph Schwabe," by Rose Eva, 1994; and the introduction by Charles Tennyson to the ARts Council of Great Britain's memorial exhibition, 1951.