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No. 19 "Youthful Ambition"
No. 19 "Youthful Ambition"

No. 19 "Youthful Ambition"

Artist (1867 - 1956)
Datec1917
MediumLithograph on paper
Dimensions55 x 38.2 cm
ClassificationsPrint
Credit LineCollection & image © Hugh Lane Gallery. Donated by the British Ministry of Information. © The Estate of Frank William Brangwyn.
Object number474
DescriptionThis planographic print (lithograph) is part of a series entitled 'The Great War: Britain's Efforts And Ideals shown in a series of lithographic prints: 'Making Sailors' series. There are a total of six lithographs in this particular series, and in total there are ten series. The lithographs are numbered as if the entire ten series are one, so this print is number 19.

This print shows a young adolescent standing on the edge of a dock with his hands in his pockets and looking forlornly at a battleship in the distance just visible through the misty rain. The boy is dressed in a black waistcoat, white shirt and light coloured trousers.

A Welsh painter, etcher and designer of furniture. Born in Bruges, Belgium, on 13 May 1867. His father was a church architect. When he was eight, Brangwyn and his family moved to London. From 1882, he spent two years working in William Morris’s workshop; his childhood experience of his father’s workshop for ecclesiastical furnishings in Bruges may well have appealed to Morris’s artistic doctrine. Subsequent to this enlightened training, Brangwyn travelled to Paris where he became an active champion of the blossoming Art Nouveau movement. He experimented introducing the sinuous lines characteristic of Art Nouveau into his paintings of galleons and shipping scenes. He specialised in painting large mural cycles, such as those for the Royal Exchange (1906), for Skinners Hall (1909) and even for the Empress of Britain (a Royal Mail liner), which later sank, taking Brangwyn’s murals with her. In 1919 he was elected a Royal Academician, having exhibited regularly there since 1885. Knighted in 1941, he died in Ditchling, Sussex, on 11 June 1956, having bequeathed most of his works to the City of Bruges, where they remain on display in a museum bearing his name.


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