| Peggy Angus | |
|---|---|
| Born | November 9, 1904 a railway station in Chile |
| Died | October 28, 1993 (aged 88) Camden, UK |
| Occupation | Artist |
| Spouse | Jim Richards |
| Children | daughter Victoria, son deceased |
Peggy Angus (9 November 1904 – 28 October 1993) was the popular name of Margaret MacGregor Angus. a 20th century artist and educator.
Contents |
Peggy Angus spent her childhood in Chile, where her father was a railway engineer.[1] At 17 she won a scholarship to the Royal College of Art in London. Her contemporaries included the sculptors Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth, painters Eric Ravilious and Edward Bawden, and illustrator Barnett Freedman.[1]
She had a short, unhappy marriage to Jim Richards, a young architect and writer.[1] Later Richards became editor of the Architectural Review.[2] She had a formidable character, described by her biographer as naive, loud and unsubtle, rising at worst to bullying, bossy and exhibitionistic.[1] She believed in living an independent lifestyle. Early in her life she began to learn Romany, which she used on her later travels in Pakistan.[3]
Peggy Angus was a painter, first and foremost, but she became best known for her crafts, designing tiles and creating hand-printed wallpaper from carved linoleum blocks.[3] Her paintings of John Piper and the family of Ramsay MacDonald hang in the National Portrait Gallery in London.[3]
She rented an unimproved shepherd's cottage (Furlongs, near Beddingham) at the foot of the South Downs, and made that a home to which a circle of artists of gathered. These included Eric Ravilious and John Piper. Eric Ravilious considered that his time at Furlongs "...altered my whole outlook and way of painting, I think because the colour of the landscape was so lovely and the design so beautifully obvious ... that I simply had to abandon my tinted drawings".[2]
Peggy Angus taught art for many years at the North London Collegiate School for Girls. She galvanised the girls to improve their environment, daubing the walls of the school buildings with repeat patterns of bright colours.[1]
The architect F.R.S. Yorke saw the potential of the repeat patterns as tiles to bring life to the interiors of modern buildings. Carter & Co began to produce her designs commercially.[1] She tested her designs on demonstration lengths of lining paper, which became the inspiration for rolls of wallpaper of repeating designs, in which no two prints were ever exactly the same.[1] Peggy Angus etched marble decoration for glass cladding. She invented Anguside, used in the building of Gatwick Airport.[3]