Title

Fred Britton.

Author

Boxall, D.

Source

Miller, H. Tatlock (ed.). Manuscripts: A miscellany of art and letters. Geelong: The Book Nook, 1931-1935.

Details

no.3, November 1932, p.21.

Publication date

November 1932

Physical description

illus.

Type

Obituary

Language

English

Country of context

Australia

Full text

Fred C. Britton
by D’Auvergne Boxall

The etched portrait of Julian Ashton which forms the frontispiece to this volume is from the needle of that master draughtsman, the late Fred C. Britton, and hangs in the Adelaide Art Gallery. English born and educated mostly on the Continent, Britton served his apprenticeship in art at the Slade School during its most brilliant period, when Professors Brown and Tonks were the masters and John, Orpen, and Schwabe were among the pupils. Scholarships and prizes fell to Britton’s lot, and his work was exhibited at many of the chief London exhibitions. He traveled for a period in Egypt as assistant to that great Egyptologist, Professor Sir Flinders Petrie, and then Fred Britton came to settle in South Australia, where he became life master at the School of Arts and Crafts. The war called him to the fighting fronts of the Old World, and his powers of draughtsmanship were later requisitioned for the war records department. Returning to Adelaide, he became the first Principal of the School of Fine Arts, which did so much to raise the standard of public taste in the appreciation of fine drawing. It was in the wider field of Sydney’s activity in art that Britton eventually carved for himself a lasting niche in the fame of Australian Art. As a teacher, he was peculiarly gifted having that rare, sympathetic understanding of the difficulties which beset the student mind, and trying to remove these rather by an adjustment of the pupil’s mental attitude towards Art, than by the forcing of ideas upon him. His period as life drawing master at the Sydney Technical College was a fortunate one for that school, and the termination, through his untimely death, was an irreparable loss.

Wherever in Australia fine draughtsmanship, is appreciated, the work of Frederick Britton ranks high, and, as a draughtsman of the figure one can justly say that he had few equals.

© D’Auvergne Boxall
Published in Manuscripts, no.3, November 1932, p.21.