Overview
Known best for his early architectural ‘perspective’ drawings, Raymond Myerscough-Walker (1908-1984), gained status amongst architects and artists during the 1930s for his architectural designs and distinctive perspective painting style.
Having studied art in Yorkshire, Raymond showed a skill for architectural drawing and won a scholarship to the Architectural Association in 1928. After graduating from the AA, rather than run a practice, Raymond soon became well known among a small group of ‘perspectivists’ working around London during the 1930’s.
The war brought an end to new building and Raymond decided to move to the country, to live a reclusive lifestyle and spend more time working on his passion – combining colour study and abstract painting.
Making a living by drawing local houses and writing articles, Raymond increasingly concentrated on producing paintings, eventually devoting his time fully to creating these works of art, until his death in 1984.
Early Years (1908-1928)
Born 30th October 1908, the eldest of three brothers, in Knaresborough, Yorkshire his early experience was one of family poverty.
His father, Herbert Walker, was a butcher who died relatively young of TB. His mother, Ellen Myerscough, was a nurse who went on to become a matron. Raymond later added her surname to his fathers, to become Raymond Myerscough-Walker, while his brothers remained Winston and Norman Walker
Ellen Myerscough was determined her boys should have a profession, and although Raymond wanted to be a jazz drummer, architecture beckoned. Ellen even moved home to ensure that her boys could attend good schools and go on to higher education.
Raymond, and his brother Winston, were both talented and this was recognised by a wealthy patron, Alex Keighley, who initially encouraged them to sketch, taking Raymond on a tour of classical buildings in Italy, and then sponsored their university education, first to Leeds School of Art and then by scholarship to the Architectural Association in London.
London Years (1928-1945)
Having studied drawing and architecture in Leeds, Raymond was awarded a scholarship and moved to London in 1928 to study at the Architectural Association. Raymond was always a maverick student. He enjoyed solving problems and he was a talented draughtsman and painter. This meant he was good at winning design competitions and painting perspective drawings of buildings, both existing and hitherto unbuilt designs.
He also enjoyed socializing, to the point where he spent his scholarship money and was suspended. During this period the AA was run by Howard Robertson, the charismatic and influential Principal, who acted as a mentor during and after his time there. It was Robertson who had him reinstated, putting a £4 a week limit on his access to spending money, the rest paid directly to the AA. Eventually, Raymond graduated with an AA Diploma.
He also won the Tite prize in 1931, but an early indication of his later eccentricity came when he then won the Prix de Rome and refused to take it up and study in Rome. He said that he felt he had “been pushed into these competitions and I cannot bear to be confined”.
His reputation as a draughtsman and creative architectural painter grew and he was soon regarded as one of the top British perspectivists of the 20th century, alongside his older contemporaries, such as Cyril Fairey and William Walcot.
The atmosphere of the 1930’s was filled with new ideas, displacing the establishment of the day, and Raymond set his sights firmly on the modernists, like Aalvar Alto, Berthold Lubetkin, Le Corbusier and the Bauhaus movement, while at the same time having to work with many traditional figures, both during his studies and subsequently in his career, in order to become known and make a living as an architectural perspectivist.
During the early 1930’s, Raymond started out sharing an office with architects Louis de Soissons and Grey Wornum and becoming an associate of the RA, but he soon veered away from this path.
His creative streak, affection for modernism and natural talent for design and painting, combined with a lack of desire to work in or run an office, led him to steer away from opening an architectural practice. He initially had a small team setting up perspectives, but he began to move in ever more bohemian circles, preferring to be a designer, writer and artist, where his ability for selecting unusual approaches to painting perspectives of, as yet unbuilt, buildings, working directly from the architects plans, made him sought after from the 1930’s until well into the 1950’s. This approach also meant that he could work for himself, at home, as opposed to having a boss.
In the 1930’s Raymond moved to Mayfair and Chelsea, to live closer to the artistic scene and away from the architectural world, working diversely on designing film sets, notably for Diamond Cut Diamond, shot at Elstree, writing for The Architect and Builder magazine, as ‘Murus’, coming up with a modular design for a modern house, one version of which was commissioned and built in 1936-37 and still stands today, at 35 Hallam's Lane, Chilwell and writing books, firstly Choosing a Modern House, in 1939, followed by Stage and Film Décor in 1940.
During WWII, Raymond worked for the RAF, designing layouts and painting landscape cycloramas for the Link Trainer, a static cockpit simulator used for training pilots.
He then began to learn crafts - woodwork, metalwork, weaving etc. - soon taking his family to live in Essex, starting an unconventional school there, where his children were the pupils.
Sussex Years (1945-1984)
Following WWII, Myerscough-Walker left London and undertook a complete change of lifestyle, characterised by changing his signature, simply becoming ‘Myerscough’. Leaving his London behind, he moved his family to West Sussex, where he continued to reluctantly undertake perspectives commissions, for money, with clients sometimes driving down to New Farm, a cottage located off-road, under the South Downs, to provide briefing drawings, while the finished perspectives were returned, by train, to London, for collection. Myerscough refused to return to London, or to even leave Sussex.
He eschewed all material ambitions, managing with as little money as it was possible to live on - his goal was to never have a nine to five job, nor pay a regular household or tax bill again - an aspiration which he succeeded in achieving for forty odd years.
Living in homes with no connected utilities, so without need for much money, Myerscough was increasingly able to follow his passions for abstract painting and philosophy - increasingly guiding his life and work by the principles of a ‘Cosmology’ called Age IV, which he had started working on in the late 1930’s.
During this period Raymond published one more book, The Perspectivist, in 1958, which was a complete handbook on how to ply his craft as an architectural draughtsman.
Over the next four decades he made a living by undertaking a few perspective commissions, but mostly by selling uncommissioned drawings of nearby houses and writing about food and wine, a later life interest, for the local newspaper and as a small, home published, booklet called Innscape.
Throughout this era Raymond increasingly followed his creative passions. He spent a great deal of time perfecting his ideas around Age IV, detailing, illustrating and refining draft manuscripts, while living within its principles and painting abstract images, often based on its ideas, eventually creating a collection of paintings, in various styles and mediums, which have never yet been exhibited or even seen by the public.
He died suddenly in June 1984, of a heart attack, while working at his woodland caravan studio, where he lived and worked with his life partner, Jane Myerscough-Walker (neé Colledge).