Arthur Ferrier and Horace Roye: Beauties Drawn and Photographed

At the beginning of the XXth century, there were fierce debates on whether photography is art. Photographers tried to imitate classic paintings doing pictorialist oeuvres. Times moved on, and people of art started collaborating instead of competing with each other. The book Arthur Ferrier’s Lovelies Brought to Life by Roye (1941), an example of such collaborations, may also remind you of some pin-up sets juxtaposed with their prototypes or Disney shoots of real actors whose appearance was a base for well-known cartoon characters.

Fig. 1. Lovelies cover (corquevols.blogspot.com)

Fig. 2. Ferrier’s picture (lambiek.net)

Fig. 2a. Roye’s work Tomorrow’s Crucifixion, 1938 (pinterest.com)

A Chemist and a Cartoonist

Arthur Ferrier (1091-1973) was a Scottish cartoonist and illustrator born in Glasgow. Initially, he worked as an analytical chemist, and drawing was his freelance activity in the Scottish tabloid Daily Record. According to cartoons.ac.uk article, the artist began sending his cartoons to newspapers, encouraged by George Whitelaw, a cartoonist on the Glasgow Evening News. In 1919, Ferrier moved to London, where he continued working as a chemist and partly as a cartoonist. There he contributed to weekly magazines like Punch, The Humorist, and London Opinion.

Long-Legged Pin-Up Blondes

Ferrier was loved and best-known for his pictures of long-legged pin-up blondes raising the spirit of English troops in WWI. His most popular strip series were Film Fannie for Everybody’s, Our Dumb Blonde for the Sunday Pictorial (1939-46), Spotlight on Sally for the News of the World (from 1945), and Eve for the Daily Sketch (1953-56). Besides, Ferrier worked in advertising and commercials. He also produced drawings for sets of the Royal Albert China ware (fig. 6, 7). His friend describes him as “a tireless and enthusiastic party-goer and party-giver. He entertained in a large room decorated with his portraits of beautiful women. There would be good food and good wine – and a massive tally of theatrical talent to entertain the happy company” (cartoons.ac.uk).

Fig. 3. Ferrier, Dumb Blonde (lambiek.net)

Fig. 4. globalauctionplatform.com

Fig. 5. heritagestatic.com

Fig. 6. The Royal Albert China, Fisherman (royalalbertpatterns.com)

Fig. 7. Fisherwoman (royalalbertpatterns.com)

A Sheepshearer, a Farmer, And a Diamond Smuggler

Horace Roye (1906-2002) was a British photographer prosecuted for his shots of nude women. One of his best-known works is Tomorrow’s Crucifixion, portraying a nude wearing a gas mask while pinned to a crucifix. Published in the North London Recorder in August 1938, this picture caused controversy. In the days of the pandemic, this photo is on-point again. In his youth, Roye didn’t want to become a photographer and changed lots of jobs until, in 1935, he set up in Chelsea as a portrait photographer. Before this, though, he worked in a London department store, boxed in prize fights, worked as a sheep shearer, a farmer, and a diamond smuggler, he was also engaged as an assistant in a number of silent movie studios and unsuccessfully married actress Joan Dare in this period. Roye became a demanded photographer in 1938 when the publisher George Routledge commissioned him a collection of nudes published as Perfect Womanhood (fig. 8-11).

Pin-Up Girls in 3-D

After the war, Horace teamed up with photographer Vala to produce images of pin-up girls in 3-D (fig. 12, 13). As the artist himself explained in his autobiographic book Nude Ego (1955), he was prosecuted for not retouching public hair. He successfully defended himself in court, arguing with Victorian standards of hairless artificial nudes, but eventually had to flee to Ireland to escape the scandal. Then he moved even farther, to Portugal, but his support of the local dictator Salazar played on him a bad joke during the Portuguese revolution when he was forced to sell his property and return to England. In 1980, Roye settled in Morocco, parasailing and swimming in his seventies. At the age of 94, he was stabbed to death by an intruder in his house.

Fig. 8. Horace Roye Perfect Womanhood cover (ebay.com)

Fig. 9. Horace Roye Perfect Womanhood

Fig. 10. Horace Roye Perfect Womanhood

Fig. 11. Horace Roye Perfect Womanhood

Fig. 12. Horace Roye, Cabaret Girls 3-D (pamela-green.com)

Fig. 13. Horace Roye London Models 3-D; Eve Club Girls in 3-D (pamela-green.com)

Fig. 14. Ferrier/Roye, Lovelies, 1941 (corquevols.blogspot.com)

Fig. 15. Ferrier/Roye, Lovelies, 1941 (corquevols.blogspot.com)

Fig. 16. Ferrier/Roye, Lovelies, 1941

Fig. 17. Ferrier/Roye, Lovelies, 1941

Fig. 18. Ferrier/Roye, Lovelies, 1941 (corquevols.blogspot.com)

Fig. 19. Ferrier/Roye, Lovelies, 1941

Fig. 20. Ferrier/Roye, Lovelies, 1941

Fig. 21. Ferrier/Roye, Lovelies, 1941

Fig. 22. Ferrier/Roye, Lovelies, 1941

Fig. 23. Ferrier/Roye, Lovelies, 1941 (corquevols.blogspot.com)

Fig. 24. Ferrier/Roye, Lovelies, 1941

Fig. 25. Ferrier/Roye, Lovelies, 1941 (corquevols.blogspot.com)

Fig. 26. Ferrier/Roye, Lovelies, 1941

Fig. 27. Ferrier/Roye, Lovelies, 1941

Fig. 28. Ferrier/Roye, Lovelies, 1941 (corquevols.blogspot.com)

Fig. 29. Ferrier/Roye, Lovelies, 1941

Fig. 30. Ferrier/Roye, Lovelies, 1941

Fig. 31. Ferrier/Roye, Lovelies, 1941 (corquevols.blogspot.com)

Fig. 32. Ferrier/Roye, Lovelies, 1941

Fig. 33. Ferrier/Roye, Lovelies, 1941

Fig. 34. Ferrier/Roye, Lovelies, 1941

Fig. 35. Ferrier/Roye, Lovelies, 1941 (corquevols.blogspot.com)

Fig. 36. Ferrier/Roye, Lovelies, 1941

Fig. 37. Ferrier/Roye, Lovelies, 1941

Fig. 38. Ferrier/Roye, Lovelies, 1941 (corquevols.blogspot.com)

Fig. 39. Ferrier/Roye, Lovelies, 1941

Fig. 40. Ferrier/Roye, Lovelies, 1941

Fig. 41. Ferrier/Roye, Lovelies, 1941

Fig. 42. Ferrier/Roye, Lovelies, 1941

Fig. 43. Ferrier/Roye, Lovelies, 1941

Fig. 44. Ferrier/Roye, Lovelies, 1941 (corquevols.blogspot.com)

Sources: Wikipedia.org; Arthur Ferrier: Lambiek.net; cartoons.ac.uk; john-noott.com; royalalbertpatterns.com; Horace Roye: theguardian.com. Pictures are taken from corquevols.blogspot.com

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