Friday 29 April 2011

The curious Mr. McBean




Angus McBean
Self portrait as Neptune, 1939





"My mother and I completely redecorated our first £600 house. there was a variety of paints and styles, but there was one room which I had papered completely with a gold metal paper stuck on canvas, rather disgusting. and there was an awful lot of black paint everywhere. I had read somewhere that if you poured the top off gloss paint you got matt paint. So I did, and so it was, but alas it never really dried. When it was all done, my mother took against the house and so we advertised it for sale as ‘an artistically decorated house’. this term, applied to a house in South Wales, had never been heard before, it was something completely new. Newport was dazzled. people used to come and look round and say ‘Yes, it is artistic’– and so it was. We sold it at an £800 profit, with the money we bought a much better house, and my mother was bitten by the bug of buying and doing up houses in which I would do most of the painting and decorating.” - from Angus McBean: Facemaker by Adrian Woodhouse





Angus McBean photographed for Harpers & Queen, 1986
Flemings Hall, Suffolk





For more images of and insight into Flemings Hall see Smouldering brick and Mick Jagger by The Blue Remembered Hills.

Now playing: The Smiths - Asleep

3 comments:

Lynne Rutter said...

wonderful! thank you

Renée Finberg said...

too fabulous!!!

Christina @ Fashion's Most Wanted said...

Brilliant post! And thank you for your kind comments about the Porter's chair xx