Phyllis Bray

• Name — Phyllis Bray • Born — 30 August 1911 • Birthplace — Norwood, London, England • Died — 1991 • Place of death — Hampstead, London, England • Education — Slade School of Art • Field — Painting, book illustration, murals • Spouse — John Cooper, Eric Phillips

Bray was born in Norwood in west London. Her father, William de Bray, was a British diplomat, who was at one point an attaché to the court of the mother of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia. Bray obtained a scholarship to study at the Slade School of Art from 1927 to 1931, where her tutor was Henry Tonks. At the Slade Bray won several prizes.

In 1933 she was elected to the London Group and also married her first husband, the artist, and fellow evening-class teacher, John Cooper and together they were to become core members of the East London Group. Bray became known for her landscapes, which she painted in both oils and watercolours, and for her murals. For over forty years Bray worked with the muralist Hans Feibusch painting in churches across Britain. A series of twelve murals, completed in 1964, by Feibusch and Bray, in the central hall of Newport Civic Centre depicts the history of Newport. Bray also worked on a number of solo projects, such as the three murals, on Music, Drama and Ballet, she produced for the People's Palace on the Mile End Road in east London. These works were thought to have been destroyed but large sections of them were rediscovered, under layers of later painting, when the building was acquired by Queen Mary University of London and are now on display again. A mural Bray painted for St Crispin's Church in Bermondsey remains intact. Several leading publishers, including the Oxford University Press and Faber & Faber, commissioned Bray to illustrate books, including several works for children. Bray also designed a 1938 poster for London Transport promoting the Wimbledon tennis championship. Bray designed advertising material for Shell-Mex & BP and for the John Lewis Partnership. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s Bray built up a collection of jewellery, mostly from the medieval and Renaissance periods, which was sold at Christie's in 1989.