Articles & Texticles

Continuing a series about Art Directors in the British film industry up to 1948, when the book containing these articles was published.

This chapter deals with Laurence Irving. (1897 – 1988)

The Doctor’s Dilemma Pre-production sketch for a film that wasn’t released until 10 years later, in 1958. Watercolour.
(Click thumbnail images to enlarge)

Irving was one of the first English designers to feature figures in his sketches. He realized how unfinished a background was without the presence of the characters that brought it to life.

The more he became aware of the interdependence of the various arts that went to make a film, the more he realized how essential it was for an artist to control them and he was the first in this country to assume the title and the responsibility for the design of the whole production, instead of just the settings.

Sketch for The Man In The Iron Mask 1928 Watercolour.
Irving is credited as a set dresser on this film.

The set of The Man In The Iron Mask 1928, Production still.

Pygmalion 1928. Watercolour. Irving was credited as an Art Department Set designer, and John Bryan was credited as Art Director. (John Bryan is a designer featured earlier in this series).

Pygmalion 1928. Watercolour.

Uncle Silas Continuity sketches. Irving is credited as Producer and Production Designer for this film.
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LAURENCE IRVING’S book illustrations were well known before he was heard of in films. ‘Hakkuyts Voyages’ and Masefield’s ‘Philip the King’ were published in 1926 and 1927.

In 1928 Irving went to Hollywood with Douglas Fairbanks to be his Art Director on the ‘Iron Mask’, the last of his full-scale silent pictures and, later, in collaboration with William Cameron Menzies, to design the production of ‘The Taming of the Shrew’.
In the course of this association with W. C. Menzies he learnt the meaning of production design and the extent to which a designer can contribute to the creation of a film.

Finding on his return to England apathy and ignorance on this score in British studios, he worked mostly in the theatre; designed a few films, wherever the subjects or the enlightened approach of the. promoter gave opportunity to put these beliefs into practice.

In the meantime, He gave a number of lectures on film design, in the hope of stimulating interest and recruiting fresh talent into this branch of what he calls graphic art.

He worked on several Bernard Shaw films, beginning with ‘Pygmalion’, was interrupted by the Second World War and, on returning in 1945, was invited by J. Arthur Rank to produce and design Le Fanu’s ‘Uncle Silas’.

Irving was one of the first English designers to feature figures in his sketches. He realized how unfinished a background was without the presence of the characters that brought it to life.

The more he became aware of the interdependence of the various arts that went to make a film the more he realized how essential it was for an artist to control them and he was the first in this country to assume the title and the responsibility for the design of the whole production, instead of just the settings.

In recent years, however, ‘production designer’ has become just another title, few men being capable of undertaking the task the title implies.

Irving’s work in the theatre is well known and admired. The son of H. B. Irving and grandson of the great Sir Henry Irving, he could hardly go wrong; he developed his natural flair as a painter at the Byam Shaw School and the Royal Academy School, afterwards going in for landscape and marine painting before embarking on his career as a designer for the theatre.