Sir Arthur swipes his genitals asunder, then the glutton cast away the club & caught the king in his arms.

Born in 1903, Bawden was a precocious artist even as a teenager, attending classes at the School of Art in Cambridge aged 15 and receiving a coveted Royal Exhibition Scholarship to the RCA. After his first success in collaboration with Eric Ravilious designing the mural for the Morley Working Men’s College refectory in Lambeth in 1928, Bawden’s success continued until the late ‘30s.

Producing work for London Transport, he was made an Official War Artist in 1940. After the war, he consolidated his artistic reputation with a large body of prints, illustrations, posters, catalogues and murals and attained full RA status in 1957. After a decline in popularity, in 1989 Bawden was accorded a major retrospective at the V. and A. Museum. Though too ill to attend, he died a happy man later that same year.