Dramatic study "Fantasy" 1917-18 by Malcolm Arbuthnot. From a vintage copy of Photograms of the year 1917-18.
Born in Surrey, Malcolm Arbuthnot was apprenticed at the age of sixteen to
a painter of cats, but photography had greater appeal for him. He took various
clerical jobs during the 1890s to support his photography. Arbuthnot was
elected to the Linked Ring in 1907 and became one of its more influential
members. He married a Kodak heiress and became manager of Kodak's Liverpool
branch in 1912, where he resumed his interest in painting and lectured on Van
Gogh. In 1914 he established a studio on New Bond Street, London, and worked as
a fashionable portrait photographer until 1926, when he moved to France to
study sculpture. He then settled in Jersey and concentrated on watercolour
painting, to great success.