Angus McBean

© estate of Angus McBean / National Portrait Gallery, London

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Angus McBean

by Angus McBean
bromide print, 1948
15 1/2 in. x 11 1/2 in. (394 mm x 292 mm)
Purchased, 2001
Primary Collection
NPG P935

Sitterback to top

  • Angus McBean (1904-1990), Photographer. Sitter in 79 portraits, Artist or producer associated with 283 portraits.

Artistback to top

  • Angus McBean (1904-1990), Photographer. Artist or producer associated with 283 portraits, Sitter in 79 portraits.

Linked publicationsback to top

  • Pepper, Terence, Angus McBean Portraits, 2006 (accompanying the exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery from 5 July to 22 October 2006), p. 120 Read entry

    Entitled Darling, we must be in Battersea Park, this self-portrait as a Graeco-Roman bust of Zeus in a deserted sandy landscape made reference to the year's celebrated open-air sculpture exhibition in Battersea Park. This first post-war outdoor exhibition included sculptures by artists such as Henry Moore and Jacob Epstein and attracted over 175,000 visitors. Half of Zeus' face is double-exposed with McBean’s photographic self-portrait, while the cut-out figures in the surreal landscape are McBean's mother and the artist Cyril Paul-Jones, husband of McBean’s sister who had died in 1945. The original marble bust was one of McBean’s treasured props, together with the miniature columns originally produced for tourists taking the Grand Tour of Europe. McBean wrote of this card in Look Back in Angus, 'I think really this is my favourite Christmas card. I hired the bust because I thought it looked like me. I put it up with two little cut-out pictures as usual - my mother and my brother-in-law. And the ruins I've got them in all sizes. I drew it carefully on the ground glass and masked off the face, then I got one of the boys to put me in. It had to be exact, and on one negative, because you can't retouch 800 prints. As you can see the nose is exactly right, half marble and half me.'

Events of 1948back to top

Current affairs

Prince Charles is born in Buckingham Palace; he is the first son of Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh
The Secretary of State for Health, Aneurin Bevan, introduces the National Health Service. Health services in Britain were now funded from central taxation and free at the point of use for every resident of the country.

Art and science

The First Morris Minor car designed by Alec Issigonis and his team (also responsible for the Mini) takes to the road, becoming a popular and classic English design.
F.R. Leavis publishes his influential study of the English novel, The Great Tradition. The book set out Leavis's ideas on the proper relationship between literary form and moral concern.

International

The policy of Apartheid is adopted in South Africa. Apartheid was a set of laws allowing racial segregation and discrimination against the black majority by the white ruling class.
As part of the dispute between Western and Soviet controlled Berlin, the Soviet Union blockades West Berlin, cutting off supplies. Anxious to avoid a conflict, America, Britain and France responded by flying in food and other provisions.

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