The Battle of Egypt, 1942- Inside an Armoured Command Vehicle in Action Art

Battle of Arakan, 1943- Overlooking Japanese Positions at Rathedaung Art

British Troops and Vehicles on the Deck of a US Landing Ship Tank Art

Anthony Imre Alexander Gross (19 March 1905 – 8 September 1984) was a British printmaker, painter, war artist and film director of Hungarian-Jewish, Italian, and Anglo-Irish descent.Thomas, Ronan
West End at War: Anthony Gross
Retrieved 8 April 2012

Early life and work

Anthony Gross was born in 1905, at Dulwich, London, the son of the Hungarian cartographer and founder of Geographia Ltd, Alexander Gross (1880–1958), and suffragette Isabelle Crowley (1886-1938). His sister was the artist, writer and publisher Phyllis Pearsall.Anthony Gross Prints
. Retrieved 8 April 2012 He attended

Shrewsbury House School Shrewsbury House School, commonly referred to as SHS or Shrewsbury House, is an independent day preparatory school for boys aged 7 to 13, in Surbiton at the edge of Greater London close to the Surrey border, its historic county, in England. Est ...

and later

Repton School Repton School is a 13–18 co-educational, independent, day and boarding school in the English public school tradition, in Repton, Derbyshire, England. Sir John Port of Etwall, on his death in 1557, left funds to create a grammar school whi ...

until 1922, and from the following year studied at the

Slade School of Fine Art The UCL Slade School of Fine Art (informally The Slade) is the art school of University College London (UCL) and is based in London, England. It has been ranked as the UK's top art and design educational institution. The school is organised as ...

under

Henry Tonks Henry Tonks, FRCS (9 April 1862 – 8 January 1937) was a British surgeon and later draughtsman and painter of figure subjects, chiefly interiors, and a caricaturist. He became an influential art teacher. He was one of the first British arti ...

. Later studies were at the Central School of Art and Crafts, London, the

École des Beaux-Arts École des Beaux-Arts (; ) refers to a number of influential art schools in France. The term is associated with the Beaux-Arts style in architecture and city planning that thrived in France and other countries during the late nineteenth centur ...

, Paris, and the Academia de San Fernando, Madrid. In 1925 he studied within

life class A figure drawing is a drawing of the human form in any of its various shapes and postures using any of the drawing media. The term can also refer to the act of producing such a drawing. The degree of representation may range from highly detailed, ...

es and as an engraver at Académie Julian and

Académie de la Grande Chaumière The Académie de la Grande Chaumière is an art school in the Montparnasse district of Paris, France. History The school was founded in 1904 by the Catalan painter Claudio Castelucho on the rue de la Grande Chaumière in Paris, near the Acad� ...

, Paris. Following study, Gross painted and produced intaglio prints in Spain, painted in Brussels, and in 1928 returned to work in Paris, and other parts of France, working entirely from life. While in France he developed a working relationship with Józef Hecht and Stanley William Hayter. During the early 1930s he exhibited in Paris galleries, becoming a member of the La Jeune Gravure Contemporaine, designed costumes and settings for ballet, and worked with composer Tibor Harsányi. He co-directed the short film ''La Joie de vivre'' with Hector Hoppin in 1934.Artoftheprint.com: Anthony Gross
Retrieved 8 April 2012 Returning to Britain in 1934, Gross worked on animated films, illustrated a 1929 edition of

Jean Cocteau Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau (, , ; 5 July 1889 – 11 October 1963) was a French poet, playwright, novelist, designer, filmmaker, visual artist and critic. He was one of the foremost creatives of the s ...

's '' Les Enfants Terribles'' and became an art director for

London Films London Films Productions is a British film and television production company founded in 1932 by Alexander Korda and from 1936 based at Denham Film Studios in Buckinghamshire, near London. The company's productions included ''The Private Life o ...

. In 1937 he returned to work in Paris. Gross had married Villeneuve fashion artist Marcelle Marguerite Florenty in 1930; their children were Mary (b. 1935) and Jean-Pierre (b. 1937). In 1940 he brought his family from France to England, to live at

Flamstead Flamstead is a village and civil parish in north-west Hertfordshire, England, close to the junction of the A5 and the M1 motorway at junction 9. The name is thought by some historians to be a corruption of the original ''Verulamstead''. Fla ...

, Hertfordshire.

Second World War

Through advocacy by

Eric Kennington Eric Henri Kennington (12 March 1888 – 13 April 1960) was an English sculptor, artist and illustrator, and an official war artist in both World Wars. As a war artist, Kennington specialised in depictions of the daily hardships endured by s ...

to the

War Artists' Advisory Committee The War Artists Advisory Committee (WAAC), was a British government agency established within the Ministry of Information at the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 and headed by Sir Kenneth Clark. Its aim was to compile a comprehensive artist ...

, Gross was offered, and accepted, the role of an official war artist, and produced etchings and oil and watercolour paintings of English coastal defences and troop training. In 1941, with a temporary commission of captain, Gross was attached to the 9th Army and painted within the Egyptian, Syrian, Palestinian, Kurdistan, Lebanese, and Mesopotamian theatres of war, sometimes accompanied by other war artists Edward Ardizzone and

Edward Bawden Edward Bawden, (10 March 1903 – 21 November 1989) was an English painter, illustrator and graphic artist, known for his prints, book covers, posters, and garden metalwork furniture. Bawden taught at the Royal College of Art, where he had be ...

, and later documenting the 8th Army's North African Campaign. From 1943 he transferred to India and Burma to witness the front line battle against the Japanese; these works were the subject of a one-man exhibition at the

National Gallery The National Gallery is an art museum in Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, in Central London, England. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The current Director ...

when he returned to England. Later, in 1944 and 1945, an exhibition of 51 of these drawings, entitled ''India in Action'', toured Australia, New Zealand and the United States. Gross accompanied the D-Day invasion of Northern France, wading ashore near

Arromanches Arromanches-les-Bains (; or simply Arromanches) is a commune in the Calvados department in the Normandy region of north-western France. The inhabitants of the commune are known as ''Arromanchais'' or ''Arromanchaises''. Geography Arromanches-le ...

at 2pm on D-Day. He sketched the beachhead landings and spent the night in a slit trench on the beach before moving inland the next day. Gross recorded the devastation of Bayeux and Caen, and followed the Allied armies to Paris and then into Germany. He witnessed the meeting of American and Russian forces at the River Elbe on 25 April 1945. Gross was, at the time, one of the many war artists who painted a portrait of General Montgomery.

Post war

Following the war, Gross returned to working in London, in

Chelsea Chelsea or Chelsey may refer to: Places Australia * Chelsea, Victoria Canada * Chelsea, Nova Scotia * Chelsea, Quebec United Kingdom * Chelsea, London, an area of London, bounded to the south by the River Thames ** Chelsea (UK Parliament consti ...

Greenwich Greenwich ( , ,) is a town in south-east London, England, within the ceremonial county of Greater London. It is situated east-southeast of Charing Cross. Greenwich is notable for its maritime history and for giving its name to the Greenwich ...

and Blackheath, while in the mid-1950s working partly in Le Boulvé. He produced

lithographs Lithography () is a planographic method of printing originally based on the immiscibility of oil and water. The printing is from a stone (lithographic limestone) or a metal plate with a smooth surface. It was invented in 1796 by the German a ...

for J. Lyons and Co., and illustrated editions of ''

Wuthering Heights ''Wuthering Heights'' is an 1847 novel by Emily Brontë, initially published under her pen name Ellis Bell. It concerns two families of the landed gentry living on the West Yorkshire moors, the Earnshaws and the Lintons, and their turbulent re ...

'' and ''

The Forsyte Saga ''The Forsyte Saga'', first published under that title in 1922, is a series of three novels and two interludes published between 1906 and 1921 by the English author John Galsworthy, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature. They chronicle the vici ...

''. In 1954 he designed the dust jacket for the first edition of ''

Lord of the Flies ''Lord of the Flies'' is a 1954 novel by the Nobel Prize-winning British author William Golding. The plot concerns a group of British boys who are stranded on an uninhabited island and their disastrous attempts to govern themselves. Themes ...

''. From 1948 to 1954 he was a life drawing tutor at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, afterwards becoming Head of Printing at the Slade School of Fine Art. From 1948 to 1971 Gross's work was exhibited in London and New York in one-man shows and as part of

The London Group The London Group is a society based in London, England, created to offer additional exhibiting opportunities to artists besides the Royal Academy of Arts. Formed in 1913, it is one of the oldest artist-led organisations in the world. It was for ...

. In 1965 he became the first president of the Printmakers Council. He became an honorary member of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers in 1979, the same year being elected as an Associate of the Royal Academy; becoming a Senior Academician in 1981, and receiving an CBE in 1982. In 1965-66 Gross was a Minneapolis School of Art visiting professor.

Public collections

Gross's works held in public collections include the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

Victoria and Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and nam ...

University of Leeds , mottoeng = And knowledge will be increased , established = 1831 – Leeds School of Medicine1874 – Yorkshire College of Science1884 - Yorkshire College1887 – affiliated to the federal Victoria University1904 – University of Leeds , ...

, Leeds Museums & Galleries, Scarborough Art Gallery, Huddersfield Art Gallery, Imperial War Museum and the

Tate Gallery Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the U ...

, London, and the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; the

National Gallery of Victoria The National Gallery of Victoria, popularly known as the NGV, is an art museum in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Founded in 1861, it is Australia's oldest and most visited art museum. The NGV houses an encyclopedic art collection across two ...

, Melbourne; Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna; Auckland Art Gallery, New Zealand; the

South African National Gallery The Iziko South African National Gallery is the national art gallery of South Africa located in Cape Town. It became part of the Iziko collection of museums – as managed by the Department of Arts and Culture – in 2001. It then became an agen ...

, Cape Town; the Kunstmuseum, Basel; the

National Gallery of Norway The National Gallery ( no, Nasjonalgalleriet) is a gallery in Oslo, Norway. Since 2003 it is administratively a part of the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design. , the admission cost is 100 Norwegian kroner. History It was establish ...

, Oslo; the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Stockholm; the

National Gallery of Canada The National Gallery of Canada (french: Musée des beaux-arts du Canada), located in the capital city of Ottawa, Ontario, is Canada's national art museum. The museum's building takes up , with of space used for exhibiting art. It is one of the ...

, Ottawa; the

Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec The Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec ( en, National Museum of Fine Arts of Quebec), abbreviated as MNBAQ, is an art museum in Quebec City, Quebec, Canada. The museum is situated in Battlefield Park and is a complex consisting of four bui ...

, Québec; the Cabinetto Nazionale delle Stampe, Rome; the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; the

Louvre The Louvre ( ), or the Louvre Museum ( ), is the world's most-visited museum, and an historic landmark in Paris, France. It is the home of some of the best-known works of art, including the ''Mona Lisa'' and the ''Venus de Milo''. A central l ...

and the Cabinet des Estampes,

Bibliothèque Nationale A library is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location or a vi ...

, Paris; the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

and the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

, New York, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the

Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Founded ...

and the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, USA. His work was also part of the painting event in the art competition at the

1948 Summer Olympics The 1948 Summer Olympics (officially the Games of the XIV Olympiad and also known as London 1948) were an international multi-sport event held from 29 July to 14 August 1948 in London, England, United Kingdom. Following a twelve-year hiatus ca ...

Bibliography

* Mayne, Jonathan, ''Anthony Gross'' (1949. Art & Technics) * Mayne, Jonathan, 'The Graphic Work of Anthony Gross', in ''Image''; 4 (1950 Spring), pp. 31–48 * Erskin, Robert, ''Anthony Gross 8 Etchings'' (1956. St Georges Gallery Prints) * Gross, Anthony, ''Etching, Engraving and Intaglio Printing'' (1970. Oxford U.P.) * Gross, Anthony, ''Battle Lines'' (1981. Imperial War Museum) * Graham, Rigby, ''Anthony Gross'' (1988. Goldmark Gallery) * Lee, Jane, ''Anthony Gross: Paintings, Drawings and Prints'' (1989. Ashmolean) * Herdman, Robin, ''The Prints of Anthony Gross: Catalogue Raisonne'' (1991. Scolar Press; illustrated.) * Colescot, Warrington, ''Progressive Printmakers: Wisconsin Artists and the Print Renaissance'' (1999. University of Wisconsin Press; illustrated) * Ramkalawon, Jennifer, ''Anthony Gross RA 1905-1984 - Early Paintings and Prints, A Centenary Exhibition'' (2005. Redfern Gallery, London) * Windsor, Alan; Flemming, Rhiannon, ''Anthony Gross RA 1905-1984: Paintings and Prints from the 1950s'' (2010. Redfern Gallery, London)

References

External links

Works by Gross in the Imperial War Museum
(345 images at 3 June 2016) * * ; animated film by Anthony Gross and Hector Hoppin (1934) {{DEFAULTSORT:Gross, Anthony 1905 births 1984 deaths Military personnel from London 20th-century English painters English male painters 20th-century British printmakers Academics of the Central School of Art and Design Academics of University College London Alumni of the Académie de la Grande Chaumière Académie Julian alumni Alumni of the Central School of Art and Design British alumni of the École des Beaux-Arts Alumni of the Slade School of Fine Art English illustrators English people of Hungarian-Jewish descent British people of Irish descent English people of Italian descent British war artists Commanders of the Order of the British Empire English film directors English printmakers Modern printmakers Painters from London People educated at Repton School People from Flamstead People from East Dulwich Royal Academicians World War II artists British Army General List officers British Army personnel of World War II Olympic competitors in art competitions 20th-century English male artists