Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Fraser, Claud Lovat
FRASER, CLAUD LOVAT (1890–1921), artist and designer, the elder son of Claud Fraser, solicitor, of the Red House, Buntingford, Hertfordshire, by his wife, Florence Margaret Walsh, was born in London 15 May 1890. He was educated at Charterhouse, and in 1908 entered into articles of clerkship in his father’s office. The year 1911, however, found him freed from the law and at work at the Westminster School of Art. By 1912 he had already begun an independent career, and he found almost at once a style for the expression of his art from which he never really departed. His work at this period included drawings of theatrical characters and scenes, and decorations for chap-books and broadsides, which were published under the title Flying Fame (1913). Judged by their imaginative quality, these latter designs are perhaps the most important which he achieved. On the outbreak of the European War in 1914 Fraser joined the army, and in 1916 was invalided home from Flanders. In 1919 he held the first representative exhibition of his work, and established his reputation. In the next year his designs for the settings and costumes of As You Like It and The Beggar’s Opera, produced at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, brought him unusual fame, and from this time onwards he produced innumerable designs for the theatre. He made a close study also of the various approaches to process-reproduction in colour, and this resulted in a prolific output by him of booklets, rhyme sheets, end papers, trade cards, and similar matter. He had realized early the importance of visualizing design and type together as an inseparable whole; and the methods which he came to employ in his printed and published work exercised a considerable influence. Among the later books which he decorated, Poems from the Works of Charles Cotton (1922) and The Luck of the Bean-Rows by Charles Nodier (1921) are notable examples. He made designs for other theatrical productions, such as La Serva Padrona, Lord Dunsany’s If, two ballets for Madame Tamar Karsavina, and Gustav Holst’s Savitri.
Fraser’s inspiration was gathered from the past rather than from contemporary life, and especially from the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. His work stands for a gay, brightly coloured romanticism. His personality was attractive; he enjoyed many friendships, and he was devoted to his family. He married in 1917 Grace Inez, daughter of Theron Clark Crawford, journalist and author, a citizen of the United States, and had one daughter. He died at Sandgate 18 June 1921, and was buried at Buntingford.
[Haldane Macfall, The Book of Lovat Claud Fraser, 1923; John Drinkwater and Albert Rutherston, Claud Lovat Fraser, 1923; private information; personal knowledge.]