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GEORGE SHERINGHAM, PS (1884-1937)
George Sheringham was born in London on 13 November 1884, and was educated at King’s School, Gloucester. He studied art at the Slade School (1899-1901) and under Harry Becker (1901-4), before moving to Paris. There he developed his decorative style through visits to the collection of Eastern art at the Musée Guimet. He exhibited at the Paris Salon and held his first solo show in the city in 1905. Three years later, he held a solo show in London’s Brook Street Gallery, and travelled in various parts of Europe and, most significantly, Algeria. At his debut as a decorative artist, at the Ryder Gallery in 1910, he exhibited silk panels that encouraged much interest and led to commissions to paint chinoiserie panels for Judge Evans and Sir Albert Levy.
In turning to book illustration in 1915, with an edition of Max Beerbohm’s The Happy Hypocrite, Sheringham made use of eighteenth-century imagery, which held him in good stead as a theatrical designer. His first set designs, for the Plough Club in 1917, foreshadowed a long association with Nigel Playfair at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith beginning in 1924. Throughout the twenties he worked as both an interior and a theatrical designer, in oriental and baroque styles, a versatility that helped him win the Grand Prix at the Paris Salon in 1925. At the end of the decade, he accomplished his finest decorative scheme at Leweston Manor, Dorset, by producing a number of murals based on the analysis of the rhythmic character of Oriental art. In the last five years of his life, ill health forced him to confine his movements, and in consequence he concentrated upon still life painting. He exhibited a number of such subjects, in March 1937, in a solo show at the Fine Art Society. He died a few months later at his home in London on 11 November 1937. He was a member of the Pastel Society and the London Sketch Club.
For further information, see: Ann V Gunn, George Sheringham, Nottingham Castle Museum, 1980
