Rory McEwen (artist)

Roderick McEwen or Rory McEwen (12 March 1932 – 16 October 1982) was a Scottish artist and musician.

Roderick McEwen was the fourth child of Sir John Helias Finnie McEwen and Lady Bridget Mary McEwen. His mother was daughter of Sir Francis Oswald Lindley and granddaughter of botanist and illustrator John Lindley, who in 1840 was instrumental in saving The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew from destruction.

McEwen was educated at home (Marchmont House) by a French governess called Mademoiselle Philippe, and at Eton where he was taught by Wilfred Blunt who described him as "perhaps the most gifted artist to pass through my hands". After his National Service in The Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders, he gained an English degree at Trinity College Cambridge, where he became friends with Karl Miller, Dudley Moore, Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller and Mark Boxer among others.

In 1955, he wrote and performed in Between the Lines at the 1955 Cambridge Footlights Revue production at the Scala Theatre in London.

In 1956, he travelled with his younger brother Alexander on the Cunarder Ascania to New York in search of Huddie William Leadbetter's widow, Martha. When they found her she was so impressed by their understanding of, and skill at, playing her late husband's music, that she allowed Rory to play Leadbelly's custom-made 12-string Stella guitar, inspiring him to set off to find his own. The brothers played their way across America, cutting 'Scottish Songs and Ballads' for Smithsonian Folkways Records, and appearing on the coast-to-coast Ed Sullivan Show on CBS, twice, before returning home to Britain.

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