Claud Lovat Fraser
| Claud Lovat Fraser | |
|---|---|
| Born |
15 May 1890 London |
| Died | 18 June 1921 (aged 31) Dymchurch |
| Nationality | British |
| Education | Westminster School of Art |
| Known for | Painting, drawing |
Claud Lovat Fraser (15 May 1890 London – 18 June 1921, Dymchurch) was an English artist, designer and author.
Claud Lovat Fraser was christened Lovat Claud; as a young man he reversed those names for euphony's sake but he was always known as Lovat. Fraser's father (also Claud) was a prominent solicitor, his mother an able amateur artist and musician. Fraser was educated at Charterhouse School in Surrey and after leaving school in 1907, aged 17, he commenced legal studies and he entered his father's firm as an Articled Clerk a year later, but he was always more interested in becoming an artist. In 1911 his father released him from his Articles, he left the firm and began to pursue a career in art.
After a year at the Westminster School of Art where his tutors included Walter Sickert he began to create a career for himself. He found an influential friend and supporter in the art critic Haldane MacFall and as an early commission executed illustrations for MacFall's essay on art and aesthetics entitled The Splendid Wayfaring. Through MacFall he also gained an introduction to the Actor Manager Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree, proprietor of His Majesty’s Theatre in Haymarket. Tree in turn, at MacFall’s instigation, commissioned him to supply the illustrations for Thoughts and Afterthoughts, his volume of reminiscences and also gave him free run of his private suite in the theatre’s dome; Fraser began to get to know theatre people, and they him. However Tree subsequently declined, in January 1914, a proposed theatre piece The Three Students written by MacFall with designs by Fraser.
In 1913, along with Holbrook Jackson and the poet Ralph Hodgson, Lovat Fraser established a small publishing firm called The Sign of the Flying Fame to produce decorative poetry broadsides and chapbooks. Although printed in limited editions and often hand-coloured, they were affordably priced and were intended to make poetry more accessible to the general public.
In October 1914 Fraser enlisted with the Inns of Court Officer Training Corps, and was quickly commissioned into the 14th Battalion of the Durham Light Infantry. After a year's training, in September 1915 the Battalion was sent out to France as part of 21st Division, one of three Reserve divisions for the forthcoming Battle of Loos. Fraser was fortunate to survive that battle unscathed; many of his battalion's officers were killed or wounded and a quarter of its men also became casualties. In December of that year, by now serving in the Ypres Salient, the battalion withstood a German gas attack in which Fraser may have suffered injuries to his lungs. He was promoted to captain in early 1916 but in mid-February that year he was invalided home, suffering from shellshock. During his period on active service he had produced many sketches, of the battlefields and of life behind the lines. Several of these sketches were submitted to the Imperial War Museum who purchased six of them in November 1917. Through continuing poor health he was never again sent abroad. He served as a clerk in the War Office on visual propaganda from October 1916 through to late April 1917, then at the Army Record Office in Hounslow until his discharge in March 1919.
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