Robert Anning Bell was an English artist and designer
Robert Anning Bell (14 April 1863 – 27 November 1933) Robert Anning Bell was an English artist and designer.
Robert Anning Bell was born in London on 14 April 1863, the son of cheese merchant Robert George Bell and Mary Charlotte Knight. He attended University College School, Westminster School of Art and the Royal Academy Schools, and then lived for a time in Paris.
Bell was appointed architect to his uncle Samuel Knight.
On his return he shared a studio with George Frampton. With Frampton he produced a series of designs for an altarpiece which was exhibited at the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society and later installed in St Clare’s Church, Liverpool.
From 1895 to 1899 Bell was a lecturer at the University of Liverpool School of Architecture. During this time he began an association with the Della Robbia pottery in Birkenhead, and also became increasingly successful as a book designer and illustrator. In 1911 Bell was appointed head of the design section at the Glasgow School of Art, and from 1918 to 1924 he was professor of design at the Royal College of Art. He continued to paint, and exhibited at the Royal Academy, the New English Art Club and the Royal Society of Painters in Water Colours, as well as at the first Graphic Art Society exhibition in 1921.
He was elected Master of the Art Workers’ Guild in 1921. He designed a large mosaic in the tympanum of Westminster Cathedral from sketches left by the architect John Francis Bentley; the work was completed in 1916. From 1922 Bell worked on mosaics for the Palace of Westminster. Effigies of Saint Patrick of Ireland and Saint Andrew of Scotland were installed in the central vestibule; St Stephen’s Hall contained one panel depicting Saint Stephen, King Stephen and Edward the Confessor, and another showing Edward III presenting the design for St Stephen’s Chapel to his master mason Michael of Canterbury. The last of these mosaics was unveiled in 1926.
His second wife was the artist Laura Richard, whom he married in 1914 (he had previously been married to Amy Caroline Ditcham in 1900). He had no children by either wife; Laura had lost her only son (Charles Antoine Richard Troncy) by her previous husband (the artist Emile Troncy) in the First World War.
He died in London on 27 November 1933, aged 70, and his ashes were buried at St James’s Church, Piccadilly. A memorial in his honour is located above them.
