Martin Battersby

Examining the life and career of a forgotten yet significant artist who influenced not only art and design but was a pioneer of queer art and aesthetics.

Martin Battersby (1914–1982) was a polymath whose career covered numerous disciplines and placed him in many roles, including theatre designer, textile designer, interior decorator, fine artist, and connoisseur and collector of the decorative arts.

At age twenty-three he designed his first stage set for a production of Hamlet starring Laurence Olivier at the Old Vic. His theatrical work and skills as a muralist also saw him working with Rex Whistler and Lotte Reiniger in the years before World War II, and as Cecil Beaton's assistant after World War II. Like Whistler, Battersby worked in the trompe l'oeil tradition, creating outstanding artworks for individuals and institutions on both sides of the Atlantic. Battersby was considered at the time to be Britain's most important trompe l'oeil artist, and he had eighteen exhibitions of his work during his lifetime.

Unlike his contemporaries, Battersby has been largely forgotten, possibly due to his humble beginnings and, in later life, his overtly queer lifestyle. This is the first publication to fully examine Battersby and his important contribution to the arts and society of the twentieth century.