James Boswell (artist)

James Edward Buchanan Boswell (9 June 1906 – 15 April 1971) was a New Zealand-born British painter, draughtsman and socialist.

James Boswell was born in New Zealand on 9 June 1906, at Westport, South Island, the son of a Scottish born schoolmaster, Edward Blair Buchanan Boswell, and his New Zealand born wife Ida Fair. He was educated at Auckland Grammar School, Auckland and the Elam School of Art before coming to London in 1925 to continue his training at the Royal College of Art until 1929. Although he was dismissed twice from the RCA painting school over conflicts with its then anti-modern stance, his early works were accepted by the London Group, with whom he exhibited from 1927 to 1932.

He joined the Communist Party in 1932, switching from oil painting to illustration and establishing himself as a left-wing artist in the 1930s. He was a co-founder of the Marxist and anti-Fascist pressure group, the International Organization of Artists for Revolutionary Proletarian Art (later called Artists' International Association - the AIA), and contributed Hogarthian satirical prints to the Left Review, for which he was art editor, and Daily Worker.

Around 1933 he married the artist, Elizabeth (Betty) Soars.

In 1936 he joined the publicity department of the Asiatic Petroleum Company (part of the Shell corporation) though continuing his socialist and anti-war involvement, such as exhibiting with the AIA during the Spanish Civil War.

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