FRASER, Claud Lovat

Claud Lovat Fraser (1890-1921) was born in London and educated at Charterhouse. and attended the Westminster School of Art. His love of literature and theatre, encourage by his friend Edward Gordon Craig, led him to concentrate his artistic output on theatrical design and highly original book illustrations and publications. In late 1914, despite a history of frail health, Fraser enlisted with the Inns of Court Officer Training Corps and was commissioned to the 14th Battalion of the Durham Light Infantry. His wartime sketchbooks (many now in the Bryn Mawr College Library, Pennsylvania, USA) and the drawings he included in his correspondence provide an intimate visual record of the trenches and battlefields of Flanders in this early phase of the war. Fraser was returned home after a gas attack. While recovering, Fraser occupied himself with plans for a pictorial history of the Grenadier Guards. Successive Medical Board Reviews continued to find his health unfit for battle through to the end of the war. After the war he worked with extreme energy holding a number of exhibitions and most importantly producing his revolutionary designs for the costumes and sets for Nigel Playfair’s important productions of As You Like It and The Beggar’s Opera. A workaholic, Fraser died of exhaustion and his weakened heart whilst staying with his friend, the artist Paul Nash, at Dymchurch, Kent in 1921.