ARBUTHNOT, Malcolm

Malcolm Arbuthnot (1877 – 1967) was a pictorialist photographer and artist. From 1914, Arbuthnot ran a portrait studio in London’s New Bond Street. His studio, along with many of his works, was destroyed in a fire. He was a friend of George Bernard Shaw. Also in 1914, he was one of the signatories – the only photographer – to the manifesto of the Vorticism movement published in the first issue of the literary magazine BLAST. After World War I, he gave up photography in favour of painting, working in oils, watercolours and gouaches. His style reduced complex vistas to simplified compositions, using gentle tonal contrasts to build space and depth.