Aubrey Beardsley

(1872 - 1898)   UK

Victorian notorious illustrator, sometime poet and translator.  His highly original, black and white line illustration took the romantic notion of paganist nymphs, Pan and fairies into earthier, even darker realms and he also produced startlingly obscene for the time erotic drawings that still shock. 

His work adorned the 'Decadent' showcase collections 'The Yellow Books' (including Arthur Machen's 'The Great God Pan' novella) for whom he was art editor, Malory's 'L Morte D'Arthur'. Wilde's sensational reissue of 'Salome' and illustrator for the Savoy magazine.   He was a friend of Oscar Wilde and attended the premier of 'The Importance of Being Earnest'.

Always frail with illness from a young age he left London for France to improve his health, but to no avail passing away prematurely at the age of only 25.

For more information go to:

http://www.giant.net/~amphagorey/beardsley/beardsley.htm

http://www.artchive.com/artchive/B/beardsley.html

http://www.ragnarokpress.com/beardsley/abe.html

http://www.glyphs.com/art/beardsley/

http://www.artrenewal.org/asp/database/art.asp?aid=1248

http://www.victorianweb.org/art/illustration/beardsley/beardsleyov.html

Image Search at Google:  click here

Lord Berners  

(1883 - 1950)  UK

Self taught composer (particularly of ballets), minor novelist, painter, ill advised dabbler in Mosley styled fascism, decadent society figure and depressive. 

To read more go to:
http://www.bikwil.zip.com.au/Vintage36/Lord-Berners.html
http://www.naxos.com/mainsite/default.asp?pn=Composers&char=B&ComposerID=101
http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/authors/Lord_Berners.htm

William Denis Browne

(1888 - 1915)  UK

One of the many artists whose promise was anihilated in WWI, to leave only a tantalysing glimpse of what might have been. All that remains are four songs, which are chilling, heartbreaking, ethereal, delightful and ahead of their time. These are collected on Hyperion's 2CD set, 'War's Embers' (which also includes some Ivor Gurney songs).  A friend of Rupert Brooke who wrote movingly of his death.

To read more go to:
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2002/May02/WDBrown.htm

George Butterworth

(1885 - 1916)   UK

British pastoralist composer, noted for setting A.E Housman's 'Shropshire Lad' and traditional songs in an all too short life.  He was killed in World War I and contributed to the revival of folk song and dance as adapted into the classic 'English Song' form.  He was a practicing Morris dancer and travelled the countryside on this bike discovering traditional songs that he then set to music.  He inspired people like Vaughn Williams to do the same (to greater acclaim as by then Butterworth was dead).  Ironically Butterworth found comfort in the camaraderie of war time trench life and felt part of society for the first time in his life.  His music is delicate and simple, yet beautiful and captures innocence and fatalism combined..

For more information go to:

http://www.calculator.net/Butterworth/

Ralph Chubb

(1862 - 1960)  UK

A British poet, printer, and homosexual artist influenced by Blake and the Romantics.  He adopted romantic imagery of angelic boys in a sexualised setting that is now indefensible although was a product of his own confused sexuality.  His liberalised, nature based romantic view was set out in a manifesto 'An Appendix' and then in lithographic books such as 'The Sun Spirit' and 'The Secret Country'.

Leaving aside his sexuality, his  prophecy of the redemption of 'Albion', or England, by the boy-god Ra-el-phaos, of whom Ralph claimed himself to be the prophet and herald was important. Seeking to justify his homosexual lusts, he created a personal mythology which explained everything in terms only he could understand. Nonetheless, Chubb's work is of fascinating psychological significance; each of the various angels, knights, seers, and boy-gods in his dream world represents an aspect of his introspective and persecuted self.

Failing in health and facing continuing legal and financial difficulties, Ralph Chubb abandoned his controversial works in the mid-fifties, and began to collect and reprint his early poems and childhood memories. He died peacefully at Fair Oak Cottage in Hampshire and was buried next to his parents at the Kingsclere Woodland Church .

For more information go to:

http://ralph-chubb.biography.ms/

Harry Clarke

(1889 - 1931)  Ireland

Clarke was born in Dublin and worked as a primarily stained glass designer and also as a macabre illustrator broadly in the style of Aubrey Beardsley.  After initial work in Dublin he moved to London where he began his illustrative career with two major efforts that never saw print: The Rape of the Lock and Rime of the Ancient Mariner.  George Harrap hired him,to provide illustrations for an edition of Andersen's Fairy Tales.    He also illustrated Edgar Allen Poe in October of 1919 to record sales and critical success.  Other illustrated books would follow. The Year's at the Spring, Fairy Tales of Perrault, Faust, and Selected Poems of Algernon Charles Swinburne featured both pen and ink and pen and wash drawings and/or more advanced color work. Faust was laden with dark and grotesque art that "anticipates the psychedelic, drug-induced fantasies of the 1960s." 

Ill-health plagued him much of the last years of his life. He worked at a feverish pace creating glass and book illustrations while trying to maintain his father's decoration studio, which he and his brother Walter ran after the untimely death of their father in 1921. In the same year  W.B. Yeats acclaimed Clarke as the best stained glass designer of the era.  The intensity of the work took its toll and he died trying to recuperate aged just 41.

To see read go to:

http://www.bpib.com/illustrat/clarke.htm

http://www.grandmasgraphics.com/clarke1.htm

http://www.crawfordartgallery.com/OtherMedia/HClarke.html

http://www.diseart.ie/harry_clarke.html

http://www.artguide.org/uk/AG.pl?Action=65490A&Axis=1117116106Q

Image Search at Google:  click here

Richard Dadd

(1817 - 1886)  UK

Now largely forgotten illustrator and at the time notable artist of fairy scenes, typically of groups of naked, dancing innocent elementals set in nature that even inspired a song by Queen Victoria.  Interested in the ancient and Egyptology he brought these qualities into his paintings.  It is now clear that Dadd was a suffering from bipolar disorder but claimed in his life to hear voices from the god Osiris.

He was known to live on a diet of only boiled eggs and killed his father, fled to Calais and tried to kill another man on the ferry.   He was put into a lunatic asylum and eventually moved to Broadmoor where he continued to paint until his death.

For more information go to:

http://www.noumenal.com/marc/dadd/#fairy

http://www.popsubculture.com/pop/bio_project/richard_dadd.html

http://www.thepixiepit.co.uk/fairyart/dadd/richard_dadd.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Dadd

Google image search:  click here

Florence Farr

(1860 - 1917)  UK

A prominent member of the Golden Dawn society, modern woman in Victorian society, actress, poetic muse to W.B. Yeats and Aleister Crowley and lover of Bernard Shaw.  She studied Egyptology and alchemy and wrote extensively on esoteric subjects including books of experiences, articles for Occult Review and other magazines.   As a last Magical work, Florence, with Olivia Shakespear, wrote and produce two Egyptian plays, The Beloved of Hathor, and Shrine of the Golden Hawk.   

In the following years, Florence continued her acting career. She even toured America in 1907, doing poetry recitals with her psaltery. Both Yeats and Shaw believed she could have achieved greatness, but by 1912, her acting career was fading, her lovers were married to others, and her beloved Golden Dawn was in shambles. Returning to her original avocation, she took a teaching position in Ceylon where none could witness her beauty fade. Within a few years she was diagnosis with breast cancer and had a mastectomy. She  later passed away, all alone in a Colombo hospital. As was the Hindu custom, she was cremated and her ashes scattered in a sacred river.

For more information go to:

http://www.golden-dawn.org/bioffarr.html

http://www.modjourn.brown.edu/mjp/Bios/Farr.html

http://www.redflame93.com/Farr.html

Charles Fort

(1874 - 1932)  US

Exploratory American journalist, writer and investigator into the unknown, noted for his humour and poetic style.  He kept open to the possibility of the supernatural and otherworldly without taking a view on events, often seeking to explain and consider their reasons and social factors in addition to recording them.  In particular Fort understood the role of folklore, urban myth and legend making in developing archetypes that reappear across time in the style appropriate to society.

Fort wrote ten novels though only one was published but it was his books on the unexplained such as 'The Book of the Damned' and 'Lo' that developed his enduring influence, still continuing through 'The Fortean Times' magazine.

For more information  go to:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Fort

http://www.sacred-texts.com/fort/

http://www.forteana.org/

http://www.forteantimes.com/

Sir James Frazer

(1856 - 1941)  UK

British anthropologist, historian of religion and classical scholar, whose best-known study 'the Golden Bough' traced the evolution of human behaviour, ancient and primitive myth, magic, religion, ritual, and taboo. The study appeared first in two volumes in 1890 and finally in 12 volumes in 1911-15. It was named after the golden bough in the sacred grove at Nemi, near Rome. Frazer did much to popularize anthropology and made its agnostic tendencies acceptable, although his conclusions are now outdated.  

Frazer's interest in social anthropology was aroused by reading E.B. Taylor's Primitive Culture (1871) and encouraged by his friend W. Robertson-Smith. In The Golden Bough he argued, that everywhere in human mental evolution a belief in magic preceded religion, which in turn was followed in the West by science. In the first stage a false causality was seen to exist between rituals and natural events. Religion appeared in the second stage, and the third stage was science. Customs deriving from earlier periods persisted as survivals into later ages, where they were frequently reinterpreted according to the dominant mode of thought.

The Golden Bough stimulated a number of writers, including D.H. Lawrence and T.S. Eliot, whose The Waste Land (1922) is perhaps the best example of its literary influence, where, for example, the Fisher King and Waste-Land shape the motifs. An abridged, one-volume edition was published in 1922. Its influence can be found in the writings of Synge, Yeats, and Joyce.

His belief that folk customs such as Maypoles, Mumming, guising and Morris dancing are continuations of pagan traditions carried forward with the original meaning lost was persuasive but has proven since to be incorrect.  Indeed his powerful concept of an annual communal pagan sacrifice which was adopted by horror literature and folklore was merely theory.  However such concepts clearly defined an enduring archetype that is attractive to the imagination and even now is difficult to dispel.

For more information go to:

http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/jfrazer.htm

http://www.bartleby.com/196/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_George_Frazer

http://www.sacred-texts.com/pag/frazer/

Percy Grainger

(1882 -1961)  Australia and later UK

British composer noted for resetting of folk songs into the 'English Song' classical tradition.  He also worked in experimental areas such as microtone (producing music in intervals less than the usual scales).  He felt unappreciated and came to hate his popular pieces whilst feeling his best work languished in neglect.  In the early part of the twentieth century he hiked around the country collecting traditional songs on wax cylinders which he then adapted into new works.  He corresponded extensively with composer Cyril Scott (also covered at this page).  An innovator of electronic music on prototype instruments such as his 'Reed Box Tone Tool' in the early fifties which he hoped would be able to perform 'free music', path then follow by Stockhausen, Varese and others..

A man of many contradictions, he was a brilliant pianist who would not play, a racist with friends of many cultures, a brilliant composer who spent most of his time building an autobiographical museum, a man dominated by his mother who wanted his sado-masochism preferences studied after his death, who wanted his skeleton on public display. Although a racist and anti-semite he also explored ethnic music and was friends with Duke Ellington and George Gershwin.

For all his faults and contradictions he was a man of sensitive musical talent who powerfully evoked the folkloric and pastoral in his music.

For more information go to:

http://www.percygrainger.net/

http://www.bardic-music.com/grainger.htm

http://www.percygrainger.org.uk/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percy_Grainger

Grainger Museum

Ivor Gurney 

(1890 - 1937)  UK

British poet and composer capturing and exploring a sense of the Gloucestershire landscape in his music and World War I in his poetry.  He was large unappreciated at the time and suffered from mental illness spending many years in hospital.  To read more go to http://www.geneva.edu/~dksmith/gurney/index.html

Montague Rhodes James (M.R.James)

(1862 - 1936)  UK

The most important ghost story writer ever along with Charles Dickens whose subtle short story form he evolved in a series of haunting stories that link into the land, places and past deeds.  He was provost of King's College, Cambridge, and later of Eton, was a noted medieval scholar, antiquary, and expert on Bible apocrypha.  There are approximately forty of his supernatural tales (some incomplete), most of which were published in Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1904), More Ghost Stories (1911), A Thin Ghost and Others (1919), A Warning to the Curious (1925) and The Collected Ghost Stories of M.R. James (1931).

Among them are famous titles such as "Casting the Runes" and "Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad". James also wrote a short supernatural fairy-tale novel for children, The Five Jars (1922).  'Casting The Runes' was later made into the classic British horror film 'Night of the Demon' with the sinister occult figure in both the story and film loosely based on Alistair Crowley.  The BBC made a series of classic 'ghost stories at Christmas' many of which were based on his stories.

To read more go to:

http://www.fadl12200.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/mrjframes.html

http://www.encompass.net/~ctyson/ghost.htm

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/%7Epardos/GS.html

http://www.litgothic.com/Authors/mrjames.html

George MacDonald

(1824 - 1905)  UK

Scottish novelist, poet, clergyman, and author of children's stories.  His poem Within and Without appeared in 1855; Poems in 1857; and Phantastes in 1858. However, his first real success came with his novels of Scottish country life, David Elginbrod (1862), Alec Forbes (1865), and Robert Falconer (1868). In this year he received the degree of L.L.D.; he attracted the notice of Lady Byron, who befriended him and later left him a legacy.

Although his Scottish novels and his charming children's books such as At the Back of the North Wind, The Princess and the Goblin, and The Princess and Curdie were successful, Macdonald's financial returns from his works had not been sufficient to provide for the needs of his wife and family, and in 1877 he was pensioned at the request of Queen Victoria. 

His complex fairy stories invoked nature and a spiritual dimension that would prove an important influence on C.S. Lewis.

For more information go to:

http://www.ev90481.dial.pipex.com/

http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/gm/bio.html

Arthur Machen

(1863 - 1947)  UK

Mystical writer of stories that link Victorian society to a hidden, ancient and malevolent Britain in stories such as 'The Great God Pan', a notorious 'Yello Book' which thrilled and repulsed Victorian Society, his complex book 'The Three Imposters' which contains classics 'Novel of the Black Seal' and 'Novel of the White Power.  His stories often explore explorations leading to corruption and a reversion back to primal slime.  Another recurring theme is of a pre-human race who still exist in Wales who inhabit our society as elves and fairies but are an evil throwback.

A member of the original Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn along with Algernon Blackwood, W.B. Yeats, Aleister Crowley, and Machen's friend A.E. Waite, he was primarily a theorist of Christian mysticism rather than an occult practitioner.  His stories explore a personal alchemical transformation (or the reverse....).  He was fascinated and increasingly repulsed by the decadence of Victorian London that he was initially seen as part of.

His works graduated towards spiritual exploration such as his masterpiece 'The Hill of Dreams', he became a Christian mystic and researched the holy grail extensively.  One of his stories created the myth of the Angel of Mons in the World War I trenches.  The composer John Ireland based a number of his works on Machen's writing and dedicated at least one piece to him. A pivotal wyrd figure.  

To read more go to:

http://www.machensoc.demon.co.uk/

http://alangullette.com/lit/machen/

http://www.waldeneast.fsnet.co.uk/machencontents.htm

http://www.cafes.net/ditch/OTS.htm

http://www.caerleon.net/history/machen/

Simon Marsden 

alive,  UK

Photographer of ghostly black and white images of historic location across Europe, capturing a strong sense of the decaying ancient.  He produces exquisite books that convey the gothic and 'veil to other realms' at its thinnest.  His books include 'In Ruins', 'The Haunted Realm' and 'The Twilight Hour' covering such places as Ireland, Celtic sites, Venice, East Germany, UK and visions of Poe's work.

To see a sample set at this site click here

Simon Marsden's web site and archive is at http://www.simonmarsden.co.uk/

Google Image Search:  click here

G.S.L. MacGregor Mathers (aka Samuel Liddel Mathers)

(1854 - 1918)  UK

Co-founder of the 'Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn' in London along with Wynn Westcott and William Robert Woodman.  Initially a theoretical study group for the 'medieval occult sciences' that changed into a practicing magical group of huge notoriety and influence which collapsed in the early part of the twentieth century.  Notable for being a catalyst for Aleister Crowley who also tried to take control of the group.  It's members included prominent artists and figures including W.B Yeats, Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, Florence Farr and many of the 'decadent' Victorian figures.

Mathers is particularly fascinating as he developed the rituals of the group through channelling unseen elements into a broadly Egyptian based magic.   Initially a member of the tiny 'Celtic Church', a product of the romantic age he progressed through freemasonry and the Anglia rosicrucian group to the floundling Golden Dawn.  He was an acolyte and employee of Wynn Wescott and A.E. Waite, both important figures in the development of this area at the time.

He considered himself James IV, King of Scotland incarnate (which was even explored in an unrelated court case), was fascinated by the military and wanted Queen Victoria deposed and the Stuarts reinstated.  Further he imagined a Napoleon type role for himself in transforming Europe and restoring Egypt.

His most important work was in converting the Golden Dawn from a theoretical to a practice group especially through the so called 'Z Grade' which set the foundation for many other rituals (and is probably derived from other sources but he wove a great story around its 'receipt).

Crowley created schisms in the group and sided with Mathers over Wescott's supposed faking of their founding documents, Mathers went to Paris and founded a splinter group leaving a bitter battle to rage between Wescott and Crowley.  Mathers was eventually expelled from the group he did so much to develop for his accusations of Wescott.  The group would then lurch towards disintegration under media scrutiny and power battles, being led by W.B Yeats towards a more Christian gnostic orientation before it folded.

It's influence on magical and folklore thinking is immeasurable.  Although nothing to do with the satanic at all, the media spin on the group created the myth of such groups and the Golden Dawn is a now a mythical font from which almost every magical, new pagan religious and psychedelic culture group takes some influence.

For further information go to:

http://www.controverscial.com/Samuel%20Liddell%20Macgregor%20Mathers.htm

http://www.mysteriousbritain.co.uk/occult/golden_dawn.html

http://www.esotericgoldendawn.com/tradition_macgregorreminiscences.htm

http://www.hermeticgoldendawn.org/Documents/Bios/mathers.htm

http://www.golden-dawn.org/truth_mathers.html

http://www.golden-dawn.org/biomathers.html

Charles Robert Maturin

(1782 - 1824)  Ireland

Irish protestant clergyman, gothic novelist, playwright and uncle to Oscar Wilde's mother.  His most famous and enduring work is Melmoth the Wanderer, a gothic novel published in 1820.  The central character, Sebastian Melmoth (a Wandering Jewish archetype), is a scholar who sells his soul to the devil in exchange for 150 extra years of extra life and spends that time searching for someone who will take over the pact for him.

The main character's name has been taken up by other writers, serving as a pseudonym for Oscar Wilde in his self-imposed exile on the continent after his release from Reading Gaol. (A chapter of Cerebus references Wilde's pseudonym.)

For more information go to:

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/authors/Charles_Robert_Maturin.htm
http://charles-robert-maturin.biography.ms/
http://www.bartleby.com/221/1319.html
 

Roger Quilter

(1877 - 1953)  UK

A composer who wrote exclusively for song not well known outside the rarefied world of 'Art Song' (classical song), his favourite poet was Shakespeare, and his settings are masterly and beyond compare. The music is complex, beautifully melodic, and encapsulates all that one would imagine of 'Englishness' in those times before and between the two world wars, when there was an innocence which emanated from English hedgerows and fields. He was homosexual, devastated by the death in WWI of his favourite nephew, and died insane.
 

To read more go to:
http://www.minuet.demon.co.uk/quilter.htm

http://www.boosey.com/pages/cr/composer/composer_main.asp?composerid=3094

Ernest Rhys

(1859 - 1946)  Wales, UK

Welsh writer of Celtic verse and literary editor.  Founder with Yeats of the Rhymer's Club who saw Rhys as the leader new Celtic writer.  His King Arthur 'Holy Grail' play 'Masque of the Grail' was influential in developing the romantic link between the two subjects in the popular conscious.   His 'Welsh Ballads' collection and other works see Wales as a respite and pastoral idyll at odds with Machen's invocations of unhuman inhabitants deep in the forests.

For more information go to:

http://ernest-rhys.biography.ms/

http://www.bartleby.com/166/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Rhys

'Saki'  (Hector Hugh Munro)

(1870 - 1916)  Burma / UK

Scottish-born writer whose stories satirize the Edwardian social scene, often in a macabre and cruel way. Munro's columns and short stories were published under the pen name 'Saki', who was the cupbearer in The Rubayat of Omar Khayyam, an ancient Persian poem. Saki's stories were full of witty sayings - such as "The cook was a good cook, as cooks go; and as cooks go she went." Sometimes they also included coded references to homosexuality.

Saki was born Hector Hugh Munro in Burma (now Myanmar), was brought up in England  by aunts who frequently used the birch and whip.  In 1900 Munro's first book, THE RISE OF THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE appeared to hostile reception.. It was followed in 1902 with a collection of short stories, NOT-SO-STORIES. In 1914 his novel WHEN WILLIAM CAME appeared, in which he portrayed what might happen if the German emperor conquered England.´ At the outbreak of World War I, although too old, Munro volunteered for the army as an ordinary soldier. He was killed by a sniper's bullet on November 14, 1916 in France sheltering in a shell crater. His last words, according to several sources, were: "Put that damned cigarette out!"

After his death, his sister Ethel destroyed most of his papers and wrote her own account of their childhood. Like her brother, Ethel never married. Saki was a misogynist, homosexual, anti-Semite, and reactionary, who also did not take himself too seriously.

Saki's best fables are often more macabre than Kipling's. In his early stories Saki often portrayed eccentric characters, familiar from Oscar Wilde's plays.  "Saki writes like an enemy, " said V.S. Pritchett later. "Society has bored him to the point of murder. Out laughter is only a note or two short of a scream of fear."

For more information go to:

http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/saki.htm

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/authors/Saki.htm

http://selfknowledge.com/318au.htm

http://www.subir.com/saki/

Cyril Scott

(1879 - 1970)  UK

A pioneering modernist composer, pianist, poet, author and occultist of influence from the Victorian period to the modern age.  During his student years in Frankfurt, Cyril Scott began establishing his career in composition, later becoming known as a member of the 'Frankfurt Group' with fellow composers Percy Grainger, Balfour Gardiner, Roger Quilter and Norman O'Neill.  His first wife Rose Allatini had her book Despised and Rejected banned upon its release.

He was active in the fields of homeopathy, philosophy, occultism and theology. He also published numerous volumes of poetry and even tried his hand at playwriting, literary translations and painting, and penned two autobiographies; My Years of Indiscretion in 1924, and Bone of Contention: Life Story and Confessions in 1969.

He was a lifelong friend and correspondent of composer Percy Grainger.  Considered both a music saviour and enfant terrible, his work does not currently have the status it deserves.

For more information go to:

http://www.cyrilscott.net/

http://www.lib.unimelb.edu.au/collections/grainger/percy/cyril.html

Sidney Sime

(1867 - 1941)  UK

Born in poverty in Manchester, England in 1867. Initially, his parents sent him down the mines to work as a ‘scoop pusher’. From this unpromising start he progressed to the Liverpool School of Art, and from thence to London, where he quickly made a name for himself as a magazine illustrator.

His working partnership with fantasy writer Lord Dunsany, an eccentric Irish peer saw Slime emerge as a peerless illustrator of the bizarre and unknown. .Towards the end of his life he became increasingly reclusive, and the man who had once loved the night life and theatres of 'nineties London spent most of his time in his cottage in Worplesden,

Now almost forgotten his strange art revealed the 'veil beyond the physical' perfectly.  '"There's something those fellows catch – beyond life – that they're able to make us catch for a second. Doré had it. Sime has it." – H. P. Lovecraft, "Pickman's Model"

To read more go to:

http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/%7Efadey/sime.html

http://www.bpib.com/illustrat/sime.htm

http://www.cartage.org.lb/en/themes/Biographies/MainBiographies/S/Sime/Sime.htm

Google Image Search:  click here

Charles Sims

(1873-1928)   UK

British painter whose work combines landscape with fantasy figures such as fairies and angels influenced by the Victorian romanticism and rediscovery of folklore.    He was highly successful becoming an associate of the Royal Academy and Keep of the Royal Schools.  His continuation of the style post World War I seems a retreat and need for an idyll.  His son was killed during the war and he was mentally disturbed by its horror witnessed as a war time artist.  His subsequent work bore signs of his disturbance and was a series of exploratory pieces on 'spirits' surrounded by auras and mystical light.  These works were rejected by his peers and patrons leading to his resignation of the commission with the Royal Academy in 1926, two years before his tragic suicide in 1928.

For more information go to:

http://www.victorianweb.org/painting/sims/

http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ArtistWorks?cgroupid=999999961&artistid=1944&page=1
http://www.artfact.com/features/viewArtist.cfm?aID=22634

http://www.outsiderart.co.uk/sims.htm

Google Image Search:  click here or click here

Austin Osman Spare

(1886 - 1956)  UK

Austin Osman Spare was an artist, philosopher and occult magician. Like Aleister Crowley with whom he had a brief association, Spare was a genius in his own time unappreciated and vilified by a society that could little understand him. His was the inspiration that led to the formation of the 'Illuminates of Thanateros' (IOT) in England in the late 1970’s and the practice of what is now known as 'Chaos Magic''

Austin Osman Spare was born  of humble roots, the middle child and only son of five children. His family although not rich managed  to find enough funds to send him to art school. At the age of seven Spare was supposedly befriended by a mysterious old women, a sorceress by the name of Mrs. Patterson. Spare would often refer to her as his second mother, his 'Witch-mother'. She taught Spare how to visualize and evoke spirits and elementals to reify his dream imagery. She also initiated Spare into witchcraft during a sabbat meeting and gave him his craft name 'Zos'.

In 1904 at the age of 17 years, Spare exhibited his first pictures at the Royal Academy. His pictures caused a storm and excelled his popularity in the Art world. He then published his first book in 1905 entitled 'Earth Inferno' depicting human figures in grotesque postures and contained some of the semi-human spirit forms he was able to visualize.

In 1908 Spare opened an exhibition at the Bruton gallery in London were his drawings and paintings soon became popular among the London 'Smart set', the Intellectuals, Art collectors, and Dandy’s of his time. He also came to the attention of Aleister Crowley who commissioned Spare to create drawings for his magazine 'The Equinox'. This led Spare into joining Crowley’s 'Argentium Astrum', an occult society known as the 'Order of the Silver Star' in 1910.  However, his association with Crowley didn’t last long, for Spare had begun work on his best known book 'The Book of Pleasure', and was beginning to form his own ideas concerning the practice of magic. The Book of Pleasure is considered one of his most important works, as well as drawings, it includes detailed instructions for his system of sigilization and the well known 'death postures'. He has much to say about human hypocrisy, religion and the meanings of true personal freedom and power.

Spare joined the army in 1916 and served as an official 'War Artist' during the First World War. He was posted to Egypt were the animal-headed gods and magical religions of Ancient Egypt appealed to his insightful nature as an artist and mystic. In 1921 Spare published 'The Focus of Life', another book of drawing containing his unique magical commentaries. Here he mentions the word 'Chaos' in relation to the normality of chaos as the natural order of things and in the self: “The more chaotic – the more complete I am”, he say’s. He philosophizes and speaks of existence, sex, ecstasy and sensation, also about self-love, belief and the 'chaos of the normal'. By 1924, Spare was at the height of his artistic success, but his success as an artist began to conflict with the philosopher within. He became disenchanted with his trendy 'Jet Set' friends and the benefactors with whom he had become so popular. He excommunicated himself by writing another book entitled 'The Anathema of Zos', and flaunted their hypocrisies in their faces. He returned to South London where he lived in relative obscurity as a recluse.

Little is known of his activities during this time except that he lived in a small basement flat caring little for money or fame. He made a small living drawing portraits of common people in the local pubs and selling them for small amounts of money. While he wasn’t publishing during this time, he continued to write and develop his philosophy, art and magic.   With the strong interest of the Nazi's in the occult he was invited to Germany during WWII and when he declined, it was reputed that his house was then targeted for bombing.

In 1947 Spare met with Kenneth Grant and gradually become more involved with other occultists of the time. He met Gerald Gardner (the creator of modern paganism) in the early 1950’s who engaged him to create sigils, magical talismans and other ritual aids. At the same time he began work on a definitive Grimoire called the 'Zos Kia Cultus', this was to contain the accumulation of his magical secrets. Austin Osman Spare died in May of 1956, his work on the Grimoire unfinished.   (text adapted from biography by George Knowles)

For more information go to:

http://www.controverscial.com/Austin%20Osman%20Spare.htm

http://www.banger.com/banger/spare/

http://www.hermetic.com/spare/

http://www.kheper.net/topics/Hermeticism/Spare.html

Count Stenbock

(1860 - 1895)  Estonia

He was born in 1860 into a landed aristocratic Estonian family. A peculiar child, he lived his life 'in a bizarre, fantastic, feverish, eccentric, extravagant, morbid and perverse fashion.' As an undergraduate at Oxford University he caught a very bad case of zeitgeist and began writing morbid poetry and stories about vampires and werewolves. He published three volumes of verse and a collection of romantic tales entitled 'Studies of Death'.

Stenbock had a glittering London career as a man about town and met the love of his life, the composer Norman O'Neill. By 1895, however, he was heavily addicted to opium and alcohol and moved back to Brighton to convalesce at his mother's house, Withdeane Hall, on the London Road, where he seems to have spent a lot of time in his room with the curtains drawn, burning candles in front of images of Buddha and the poet Shelley. He died during a drunken argument with his stepfather - waving a poker he toppled over and killed himself on the fireplace and is buried in Brighton.

For more information go to:

http://www.brightonourstory.co.uk/stenbock.htm

http://homepages.pavilion.co.uk/users/tartarus/stenbock.htm

http://homepages.pavilion.co.uk/users/tartarus/s17.htm

A group of interested parties called 'The Lost Club' is reclaiming the reputations of such writers  for more information go to http://freepages.pavilion.net/users/tartarus/lost.html

Frank Meadow Sutcliffe

(1853 - 1941)  UK

This artist was a pioneer of photography producing atmospheric portraits of Whitby, an ancient and still largely unspoiled town in England.  This fishing town came was perfectly realised in the sepia prints by this artist showing the simple, hard life of the working classes.  Whitby is also known for it's magical associations and Bram Stoker placed the setting down of Dracula's abandoned ship in the town.  The ruined Abbey sits high above the town on the north older side casting it's ancient shadow across the present.

More photographs and prints may be viewed or acquired at

http://www.sutcliffe-gallery.co.uk

http://www.queensland.co.uk/whitby2.html

Also to see our page on the artist click here

Google Image Search:  click here

Louis Wain

(1860-1939)  UK

The British artist Louis Wain was a highly successful illustrator whose reputation was made on his singular and gently humorous pictures of cats. A cat-lover himself and sometime President of The National Cat Club, Wain claimed in an interview in 1896 that his "fanciful cat creations" were first suggested to him by Peter, his black & white cat. Demand for Wain's work diminished in the decade after the outbreak of the First World War, leaving him progressively impoverished. He began to show signs of mental disorder, including becoming aggressive, abusive and sometimes violent.

n 1924 he was certified insane and placed in the paupers' ward of Springfield Hospital at Tooting. Despite his delusional state, Wain continued to draw and paint, which led a year later to him being recognised by one of the hospital guardians and transferred to a private roomat the Royal Bethlem Hospital in Southwark, with money raised through public appeal. In Bethlem he was allowed to draw as much as he liked, and it was here that he produced the first of his fascinating series of "kaleidoscope" cats. These ranged from relatively straightforward renderings of the cat itself, though painted in intense, non-naturalistic colour and surrounded by intricate geometric patterns which deny any illusion of spatial depth, to images in which the figure of the cat is exploded in a burst of geometric fragments, the like of which are not to be found in any of Wain's work before his illness. In 1930he was moved to Napsbury in Hertfordshire, where he continued to work sporadically until his death in 1939.  (text from Outsider Art see link below)

For more information go to:

http://www.lilitu.com/catland/

http://www.outsiderart.co.uk/wain.htm

http://www.bizarremag.com/bizarre_lives.php?id=142

Google Image Search:  click here

Peter Warlock

(1899 - 1930)  UK

Composer and explorer in the occult, a close associate of Alistair Crowley who incorporated folk music into his compositions.   His name of 'Warlock' was taken on but his real name was Phillip Heseltine.  He set a number a Victor Neuberg's poems to music, the poet being the close friend and magical partner of Crowley.  Warlock also visited the notorious 'Abbey' that got Crowley expelled from Italy.  He died of gas poisoning in 1930, the cause either being accident or suicide.  Towards his life's end due to his magical associations he was convinced he was being pursued by demonic spirits.  Looking past this his music is delightful, often mournful and one of the main artists to set English traditional songs to classical backing in the 'English Song' form.  For more information go to:

http://www.peterwarlock.org/

http://www.redflame93.com/Heseltine.html
http://www.stormloader.com/users/abrax7/tregerthen.htm

Mary Webb

(1891 - 1927)  UK

Shropshire author whose novels and poems are imbued with a sensitive connection to nature and a spirit of mysticism.  Her books include 'Precious Bane' and 'Gone To Earth'. 

To read more go to

http://www3.shropshire-cc.gov.uk/webb.htm

Fred Whiting

(1905 - ? deceased )  UK

To read more go to:

http://www.eatmt.org.uk/fred_whiting.htm