Malcolm Arbuthnot was a pictorialist

Pictorialism

‎Pictorialism is the name given to a photographic movement in vogue from around 1885 following the widespread introduction of the dry-plate process. It reached its height in the early years of the 20th century, and declined rapidly after 1914 after the widespread emergence of Modernism...

 photographer and artist.

In 1907 he joined the Brotherhood of the Linked Ring, an organisation founded in 1892 by Alfred Maskell and others dissatisfied with the ethos of the Royal Photographic Society

Royal Photographic Society

The Royal Photographic Society is the world's oldest national photographic society. It was founded in London, United Kingdom in 1853 as The Photographic Society of London with the objective of promoting the Art and Science of Photography...

 exhibitions, with the aim to promote naturalistic and aesthetic photography as an independent art.

From 1914 Arbuthnot ran a portrait studio in London's New Bond Street

Bond Street

Bond Street is a major shopping street in the West End of London that runs north-south through Mayfair between Oxford Street and Piccadilly. It has been a fashionable shopping street since the 18th century and is currently the home of many high price fashion shops...

, in the early 1900s photographing many celebrities including the actress Lillah McCarthy

Lillah McCarthy

Lillah McCarthy was an English actress and theatrical manager.McCarthy was born in Cheltenham. She studied elocution under Hermann Vezin and Emil Behnke, and made her first appearance on the stage in 1895...

, the pianist Harriet Cohen

Harriet Cohen

Harriet Cohen CBE was a British pianist.-Biography:Harriet Cohen was born in London and studied piano at the Royal Academy of Music under Tobias Matthay, having won the Ada Lewis scholarship at the age of 12. She made her debut at a Chappell's Sunday concert at the Queen's Hall a year later...

 and the poet Robert Nichols. His studio, along with many of his works, was destroyed in a fire. He was a friend of George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...

.

Also in 1914, he was one of the signatories - the only photographer - to the manifesto of the Vorticism

Vorticism

Vorticism, an offshoot of Cubism, was a short-lived modernist movement in British art and poetry of the early 20th century. It was based in London but international in make-up and ambition.-Origins:...

 movement published in the first issue of the literary magazine

Literary magazine

A literary magazine is a periodical devoted to literature in a broad sense. Literary magazines usually publish short stories, poetry and essays along with literary criticism, book reviews, biographical profiles of authors, interviews and letters...

 BLAST.

He combined his interests in photography and art by using gum and oil pigment processes, after joining the Linked Ring making increasingly controversial anti-naturalistic

Naturalism (art)

Naturalism in art refers to the depiction of realistic objects in a natural setting. The Realism movement of the 19th century advocated naturalism in reaction to the stylized and idealized depictions of subjects in Romanticism, but many painters have adopted a similar approach over the centuries...

 gum print

Gum printing

Gum printing is a way of making photographic reproductions without the use of silver halides. The process used salts of dichromate in common with a number of other related processes such as sun printing....

s.

After World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

 he gave up photography in favour of painting, working in oils, watercolours and gouache

Gouache

Gouache[p], also spelled guache, the name of which derives from the Italian guazzo, water paint, splash or bodycolor is a type of paint consisting of pigment suspended in water. A binding agent, usually gum arabic, is also present, just as in watercolor...

s.

He married twice, and had numerous adopted children. His first marriage to Florence Emily Goold ("Daisy") ended in divorce following her adultery with the poet John Gould Fletcher

John Gould Fletcher

John Gould Fletcher was an Imagist poet and author. He was born in Little Rock, Arkansas to a socially prominent family. After attending Phillips Academy, Andover Fletcher went on to Harvard University from 1903 to 1907, when he dropped out shortly after his father's death.Fletcher lived in...

, whom she later married. (The settlement from Fletcher for her upkeep was instrumental in Arbuthnot financing the launch of his London studio). His second wife Florence Annie Davison was the widow of George Davison

George Davison (photographer)

George Davison was a noted English photographer, a proponent of impressionistic photography, a co-founder of the Linked Ring Brotherhood of British artists and a managing director of Kodak UK...

, a millionaire through investments in Kodak

Eastman Kodak

Eastman Kodak Company is a multinational imaging and photographic equipment, materials and services company headquarted in Rochester, New York, United States. It was founded by George Eastman in 1892....

, and her inherited wealth enabled the couple to retire to Jersey

Jersey

Jersey, officially the Bailiwick of Jersey is a British Crown Dependency off the coast of Normandy, France. As well as the island of Jersey itself, the bailiwick includes two groups of small islands that are no longer permanently inhabited, the Minquiers and Écréhous, and the Pierres de Lecq and...

in 1931.

External links

• Malcolm Arbuthnot prints at National Portrait Gallery
• Genealogy and picture