Barnett Freedman was born to Russian-Jewish émigré parents in Stepney, London in 1901. He took classes at St Martin's School of Art before enrolling at the Royal College of Art and later became known as a painter and for his book cover designs and illustrations.
Lithographer, book illustrator and painter, Barnett Freedman was born in Stepney in the East End of London, England, on 19 May 1901, the eldest of five children of Louis Freedman, a journeyman tailor, and his wife, Reiza Ruk, both Jewish immigrants from Russia. As a child, he suffered extended periods of ill health and had no formal schooling after the age of nine, but exhibited a talent for drawing. Aged sixteen, he was employed as a draughtsman, first to a monumental mason and later to an architect, where he developed an interest in lettering. He also took evening classes at St Martin's School of Art in London for five years from 1917. Having failed to obtain the London County Council Scholarship that would allow him to study at the Royal College of Art, Freedman was nevertheless admitted, following a personal recommendation by the Anglo-Jewish painter, William Rothenstein, then principal. At the RCA Freedman studied under Paul Nash between 1922 and 1925, alongside Eric Ravilious, Edward Bawden, Edward Burra and Enid Marx. Freedman retained strong links with the RCA throughout his working life, as a tutor, examiner and, finally, as an Honorary Fellow. He also taught at the Ruskin School of Drawing at Oxford. In 1929 he held his first exhibition at the Literary Bookshop in Bloomsbury, followed by a second show at the Zwemmer Gallery in 1931 (established by émigré Anton Zwemmer), which revealed his talent as a lithographer and brought him wider recognition. Freedman also maintained connections with his Jewish roots, showing regularly with Ben Uri between 1935 and his death, and presenting a lecture on 'The Artist Today' in 1947.
Freedman's first major book commission was to design and illustrate war poet, Siegfried Sassoon's Memoirs of an Infantry Officer for publishers Faber & Faber (1931). These illustrations were included in his Zwemmer Gallery exhibition, and later in the British Art in Industry Exhibition, sponsored by the Royal Society of Art in collaboration with the Royal Academy of Arts, in 1935. Freedman subsequently illustrated dozens of book dust jackets and classic novels by Charlotte Brontë, Walter de la Mare, Charles Dickens, Edith Sitwell, William Shakespeare and others, including for the Baynard Press. His designs for War and Peace (1938) and Anna Karenina (1951) for the Limited Editions Club are widely considered among the finest examples of twentieth-century book design. Freedman believed that 'the art of book illustration is native to this country […] for the British are a literary nation'. He argued that 'however good a descriptive text might be, illustrations which go with the writings add reality and significance to our understanding of the scene, for all becomes more vivid to us, and we can, with ease, conjure up the exact environment – it all stands clearly before us' (Gentle Author's blog, Spitalfields Life, 3 March 2020). Through his work in cover design and illustration, Freedman mastered the medium of auto-lithography, where the artist applies his own designs directly onto a lithographic stone without the intervention of technicians or photomechanical means. In 1935, Freedman designed The King's Stamp, a postage stamp commemorating the Silver Jubilee of King George V, which brought his work to the attention of the wider public. Four years later he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA). With the outbreak of the Second World War, Freedman was appointed an Official War Artist and travelled with the British Expeditionary Force in France together with Edward Ardizzone and Edward Bawden. In 1941 he worked on board HMS Repulse, producing a popular print for the National Gallery. In June 1944 he travelled to France to record the aftermath of the D-Day Landings. Freedman received a CBE for his services in 1947. Both before and after the war he also worked as a commercial designer, producing work for clients such as Ealing Films, GPO, Curwen Press, Shell-Mex and British Petroleum, Wedgwood, and London Transport. He oversaw lithography projects for Lyons teashops and Guinness (the latter were included in the 2016 Pallant House Gallery exhibition Prints for the Pub: The Guinness Lithographs). He was elected a Royal Designer for Industry (RDI) in 1949 and became an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Art in 1956.
Barnett Freedman died in London, England on 4 January 1958, having suffered from cardiac failure in his studio at 59 Cornwall Gardens, and was cremated at Golders Green. A retrospective exhibition of his work was shown at the Arts Council of Great Britain in London and toured the country in 1958. His works in the Ben Uri Collection have also been exhibited regularly since his death. In 2020, the extensive exhibition, Barnett Freedman: Designs for Modern Britain, was organised by Pallant House Gallery, Chichester. His work is represented in UK public collections including the Ashmolean Museum, Ben Uri Collection, Fitzwilliam Museum, and Victoria & Albert Museum.
Barnett Freedman in the Ben Uri collection
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Barnett Freedman]
Publications related to [Barnett Freedman] in the Ben Uri Library