The art of W.B.E. Rankin

Raised in Edinburgh, William Bruce Ellis Rankin was born into wealth and lived the life of an aesthete.  He grew up with Ernest Thesiger (Septimus Pretorius of Bride of Frankenstein fame) meeting him while attending The Slade.  You can see Thesiger above as a young man in the fourth and fifth paintings.  Thesiger married Rankin's sister Janette, and upon hearing of their union W.B.E. shaved his head.  Whether it was a way for them both to be closer to Rankin, or simply for Thesiger to be closer (Janette had in fact had eyes for Margaret Jourdain, a furniture designer) is speculation.

During the First World War Rankin and Thesiger repaired and sold pieces of 'historical embroidery' as a counterpoint to all the death and filth they most probably witnessed.  I don't know why exactly I so love this idea.  I suppose it is an insistence on beauty, on the agelessness of beauty, in the face of all the mud and dismemberment that trench life inevitably made a constant for them both.  And the fact it is so utterly gay.  "Rankin!  You're on the firestep tonight at 0200!"  "But sergeant!  I am finishing a piece of brocade from Château de Maisons-Laffitte!!"

W.B.E. moved in a very cultured and very rich circle of friends post war.  They included John Singer Sargent and Isabella Stewart Gardner, among many many others.  Certainly it was Sargent's friendship that gave W.B.E. letters of introduction to that world of true wealth and privilege in Britain and the United States.  Once established and raking in the commissions, he purchased Warbrook House in Hampshire at the end of the war.  A beloved place for Rankin, he was heartbroken when the Depression set in and he had to sell it in 1935.

He died at the early age of 59 of a cerebral haemorrhage in 1941, and his work has been largely forgotten.  This is possibly due to the fact he was an Edwardian and his style was trod upon when Germany invaded Poland in 1939.  Much of that interwar cultural period in Britain came to a screeching halt when troops and Stukas moved west and Chamberlain declared war.  The amazing thing is, his work is not at all expensive.  A painting or watercolour up at auction is only a few thousand pounds, often less (even in the hundreds), at the hammer.  Anyone with a little money saved can own even a humble piece of his work.