Peter Lambda was born into a Jewish family in Budapest, Austria-Hungary (now Hungary) in 1911. Lambda studied for a career in medicine before becoming a sculptor and spent time in both Paris and Prague. In 1938 he immigrated to England, where he became famous for his portraits of many influential people of the theatre.
Sculptor and artist Peter Lambda (born Vilmos Levy) was born into a Jewish family in Budapest, Austria-Hungary (now Hungary) on 12 February 1911. His father was a doctor and his mother a distinguished psychoanalyst who studied under the tutelage of Sigmund Freud and spent some part of her learning period living in his household. In the process, Lambda met Freud on several occasions as a child (Waterhouse, 2018). Mostly educated in Vienna, Lambda studied medicine before switching to sculpture, spending some time in both Paris and Prague. In 1938 he held a solo exhibition at the Tamas Gallery, Budapest, before immigrating to London, England in the same year, where he worked for the Crown Film Unit, writing propaganda scripts for the BBC.
In his spare time in London, Lambda sketched and sculpted portraits. Due to his mother’s connection and his own childhood memories, Lambda persuaded an elderly Sigmund Freud (recently arrived as a refugee himself) to sit for a portrait bust (private collection) between August and September 1938, just before the psychoanalyst died. When the bust was completed, Freud’s daughter Anna thought it bared little resemblance, while Freud commented to the artist: ‘you made me look like a Greek philosopher’ (Waterhouse, 2018). Lambda later drew the then Secretary of State for Air, Sir Kingsley Wood, in 1939 (National Portrait Gallery). Commissioned by Tredegar Working Men’s Club, he also produced one of his ‘most successful portrait heads’ of Labour MP Aneurin ‘Nye’ Bevan circa 1945 (National Portrait Gallery), and the ‘truculent over-life-size head attracted some attention when it was exhibited at the Arcade Gallery’ (Gibson, 1995). The same year, an exhibition of his work, Sculpture by Peter Lambda, was shown at the Peter Jones Gallery in London. 1945 also saw Lambda briefly switching from sculptor to cartoonist to illustrate the cabaret booklet Point ugye mint az angolok (British Library), translating to Just like the English, privately published by Londoni Pódium. Such satirical cabaret, having relocated from Budapest and Berlin to the centre of ‘Free Europe’ in London during the Second World War, ‘raised cash and spirits among the Hungarian émigré community’ during a time of exile and persecution abroad (Waterhouse, 2018).
After the war Lambda joined Imperial Chemical Industries and engaged in industrial design, notably with the new material Perspex, with which he sculpted. He went on to produce busts of theatrical personalities such as actor Laurence Olivier in 1950 (Central School of Speech & Drama), and poet and playwright Christopher Fry in 1951 (National Portrait Gallery). It has been suggested that Lambda had in fact visited Olivier’s country residence at Notley Abbey, Buckinghamshire to sculpt Vivien Leigh, but she ‘behaved so badly about it that he had to make do with Larry’ (Waterhouse, 2018). Lambda showed at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition twice in the 1950s, and in the 1952 exhibition showed his half-length nude of the Mexican actress Linda Christian, then married to American actor Tyrone Power, which caused a stir. Lamda was quoted as telling the American columnist Robert Musel: ‘What every man needs is a bust. A bust of his wife, that is’ (Waterhouse, 2018). Lambda married his second wife, the actress Betty Paul, in 1958. By then he had written for the theatre, and with her he scripted episodes for TV series. They created their own soap opera, Weavers Green, made for ITV by Anglia Television in 1966, notable as Britain's first rural soap, which aired twice-weekly. Lambda had ‘continued to sculpt portraits of children privately, but there is a sense that his sculpture had early on lost out to his writing career and he never seemed to regain the creative flurry which produced the theatrical portraits of the early 1950s’ (Gibson, 1995).
Lamda’s last bust was of the actress Liz Robertson in 1981, after which eye trouble made sculpting difficult. He continued writing until 1993, having moved from London to Gloucestershire, in 1987. Peter Lambda died in Tibberton, Gloucestershire, England on 14 June 1995. Many of his portrait busts are held in UK public collections, including the National Portrait Gallery and Kensington Central Library, and some of his caricature drawings are held by the V&A.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Peter Lambda]
Publications related to [Peter Lambda] in the Ben Uri Library