Claud Lovat Fraser

Claud Lovat Fraser (15 May 1890 London – 18 June 1921, Dymchurch) was an English artist, designer and author. Early life Claud Lovat Fraser was christened Lovat Claud; as a young man he reversed those names for euphony's sake but he was always known as Lovat. Fraser's father (also Claud) was a prominent solicitor, his mother an able amateur artist and musician. Fraser was educated at Windlesham House School and Charterhouse and after leaving school in 1907, aged 17, he commenced legal studies and he entered his father's firm as an Articled Clerk a year later, but he was always more interested in becoming an artist. In 1911 his father released him from his Articles, he left the firm and began to pursue a career in art. After a year at the Westminster School of Art where his tutors included Walter Sickert he began to create a career for himself. He found an influential friend and supporter in the art critic Haldane MacFall and as an early commission executed illustrations for MacFall's essay on art and aesthetics entitled The Splendid Wayfaring. Through MacFall he also gained an introduction to the Actor Manager Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree, proprietor of His Majesty’s Theatre in Haymarket. Tree in turn, at MacFall’s instigation, commissioned him to supply the illustrations for Thoughts and Afterthoughts, his volume of reminiscences and also gave him free run of his private suite in the theatre’s dome; Fraser began to get to know theatre people, and they him. However Tree subsequently declined, in January 1914, a proposed theatre piece The Three Students written by MacFall with designs by Fraser. In 1913, along with Holbrook Jackson and the poet Ralph Hodgson, Lovat Fraser established a small publishing firm called The Sign of the Flying Fame to produce decorative poetry broadsides and chapbooks. Although printed in limited editions and often hand-coloured, they were affordably priced and were intended to make poetry more accessible to the general public.