The Banting Brothers
Every year, in the School Archive, we make fascinating discoveries which add to the rich tapestry of Emanuel's history. A casual enquiry often leads to the discovery of an Old Emanuel that causes some excitement. Recently, such an email revealed that the artist John Banting was an old boy of the school. Banting may not be a household name, nevertheless, I quickly found out that he was one of the leading British Surrealist painters of the 20th Century, and as I delved deeper into his life I realised he really was a truly great addition to our cannon of illustrious old boys, as this article will reveal.
Bizarrely enough, John Banting's brother, George Banting, also an OE, is a name which would be much more familiar to many of the older generations of OEs. George had a life-long career in the army and RAF, which began in the trenches of World War One with the Surrey Regiment. He joined the RAF when it was founded in 1918, and remained in service until he retired in 1951. In the Second World War he trained fight pilots in Africa, retiring with the rank of Air Vice-Marshall. He was awarded the CBE in 1943. There is much about George Banting's wartime exploits in the School Archive, and many of his service log-books are held at the Imperial War Museum. So what about his little brother John?
Once I started researching into John Banting I began to wonder why there was virtually nothing about this man in our School Archive? Indeed, why was such a well established artist not known as a famous Old Boy? The deeper I dug, the more I felt sure I had stumbled upon a fascinating OE, who may have hidden behind the distinguished military career of his brother. Career-wise, the brothers were as different as humanly possible; one a career soldier and the other, as I will reveal, an anti-establishment left wing artist, agitator, hoaxer, poet and satirist who seemed willing to try his hand at anything!
John was four years younger than George (born 1902) and was slightly too young to serve in the First World War. The only references I could find relating to him in our School Archive refer to an English class prize he won, and a few appearances in School Sports Day. His brother George was a rugby man, and played for the school 1st XV before joining the forces for World War One. Beyond school their lives were radically different.
So why is John Banting such an exciting find? Firstly, he is only the second professional, and renowned artist, to be identified as an OE (Derek Davis is the other), secondly, this colourful Surrealist artist continues to be widely exhibited 40 years after his death, and thirdly, he lived an incredible life that crossed paths with many of the great house-hold names of the 20th Century.
After leaving Emanuel, he worked as a book clerk whilst attending evening school at Westminster School of Art and spent some time studying in Paris in the early 1920s. Banting began to frequent London art circles in the 1920s. Art critic Louisa Buck calls him "a cheekily handsome, gay working class South Londoner... who in his heyday was a conspicuous presence at parties and pranks where the Bright Young Things merged with Bloomsbury". By the mid 1920s he had his own London studio and knew most of the leading artists of the time, such as Duschamps. His surrealist paintings were often very inventive and elegant works of bizarre hybrids of organic forms and human body parts. Banting also tried his hand at poetry, and illustrated them with his own art-work, often satires on the class system, and different art movements. Always keen to try something new, he also designed and created book jackets (possibly to pay the rest?) and illustrations for authors such as Virginia Woolf.
Banting was also involved in one of the most sophisticated art hoaxes of its day; helping in the creation of a fictitious artist called "Bruno Hat". In 1929 many of London's leading socialites and critics, included Winston Churchill, were conned into believing that "Bruno Hat" was a real painter. The "exhibition" of Banting's paintings (credited to "Bruno Hat") was hailed as a triumphant success in all the newspapers, only to be later revealed as a hoax. This threw custard into the face of the art establishment. Banting created many of the paintings, and a young author, Evelyn Waugh, wrote the exhibition notes. Churchill, apparently, hated the paintings.
Whilst continuing to paint and write prolifically Banting led an extravagant life. In 1932 he fought against racial hatred in America after befriending a coloured American poet, was in 
Spain in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War, where he met Ernest Hemingway, and tried to join the International Brigade. He became a Stalinist, and during World War Two, after being declared unfit for service worked as Art Director for the Ministry of Information's Strand Films, where he collaborated with the poet Dylan Thomas. This remarkable man was also the art director of the left wing magazine Our Time. Bizarrely enough, for a Communist anyway, Banting was also involved in the creation of a 3 minute film called "Birth of the Robot", which was an animated film which advertised Shell Oil and was widely seen on the cinemas. The puppets in this fantasy advert were designed by Banting, and stylistically, this pioneering mood piece was way ahead of its time.
Banting continued to exhibit widely in the 1950s, any Surrealist exhibition would not have been complete without an example of his work. However, by the 1960s the new work had all but dried up and Banting fell on very hard times, possibly due to problems with alcohol, but was saved from complete destitution by a grant from the Artists Benevolent Fund. He produced few paintings in his last years and exhibitions relied heavily on his earlier works. However, his work is still featured in major galleries such as the Victoria & Albert, The Tate, and the National Portrait Gallery.
John Banting had a very strong anti-establishment stance, and one wonders whether this could be in any way a reaction to his big brother, a career army man, who lived his whole life for the establishment? I don't think we'll ever know the answer to that question. I think the fact that the Old Emanuel Association Newsletter ran an obituary for George Banting, but not for John, was a clear sign that John was the outsider and agitator. However, this was a role he obviously loved, and he spent his entire career living up to it.
Art critics believe, sadly, that this energetic maverick never fully fulfilled his early promise, in later years, as his drinking escalated, critically, his work became increasingly uneven and repetitive, and he died in relative obscurity in Hastings in 1971. However, within a year of his death there had already been two major retrospective exhibitions of his work. A year later, his brother George also died. The obituary of John, from The Times, notes that "he refused point blank to become a prey to the vultures of nostalgia. He preferred to live day to day, delighting with a certain impish glee in the refusal of young people to conform to what many of his contemporaries felt to be right and proper".
I'm no art expert, however, anti-establishment figures such as John Banting appeal to me. He bucked the trends of his day, and is right up there with the OE anarchist writer Vernon Richards, as the two OEs I would most like to invite to a party! Also from The Times, a friend writes; "the last time I saw him he was swigging vodka and in high spirits, He knew he didn't have long to go, but was as irrelevant and self-mocking as ever". Two of Banting's most famous paintings, used by London Underground, are now on display in the Marquand Room. Or if you can afford it, an original Banting will cost you around £10,000, if not, retrospective exhibitions seem to appear every few years.