Eric Fraser (1902-1983)

Illustrator and painter but especially an outstanding pen and ink draughtsman. Fraser studied at Goldsmiths College School of Art under Frederick Marriott and Edmund J Sullivan. He exhibited at the RA and SSA, but it is on the printed page that he established his reputation. He worked for the Folio Society, Golden Cockerel Press and the Radio Times. He made murals for the Navigators Memorial in Westminster Abbey and Babcock House, and a huge one in connection with the Festival of Britain in 1951. Latterly Fraser said that he preferred commissions that allowed him to use his imagination and did not limit him to representing reality. A wide-ranging exhibition of Fraser's work, sponsored by British Gas (one of Fraser's many industrial clients), toured the UK in the early 1990s. In 2000 the V&A organised an exhibition to mark their acquisition, directly from his family, of several hundred works. Selected Literature: Sylvia Backmeyer, Eri