John Farleigh, 1900-1965

The artist and wood engraver [John] Frederick William Charles Farleigh (1900-1965), was born in London in 1900. He left school at 14 to become an articled apprentice at the Artists Illustrators Agency, London, where his work involved lettering, wax engravings and black and white drawings for press advertising. At the same time he began to attend evening classes in drawing at the Bolt Court School. In 1918 he was called up for service in the army and served until the armistice in November of that year. In 1919 he completed his apprenticeship and obtained a government grant which enabled him to study full time for three years at the London County Council Central School of Arts and Crafts (later the Central School of Art and Design). Amongst his teachers there were Bernard Meninsky and Noel Rooke who introduced him to wood engraving. From 1922 to 1925 Farleigh taught art at Rugby School before returning to London to take up a part-time post at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, teaching antique and still-life drawing and later, illustration.

Whilst continuing his work as a teacher, John Farleigh pursued the three strands of his artistic career: as a designer, perhaps most notably for London Transport (1933 - 1963); as a book illustrator, employing his great talents as a wood engraver and as a producer of fine, individual prints, again from wood engraving.

In 1932 Farleigh received a great deal of acclaim and recognition for his illustrations to an edition of The Adventures of the Black Girl in her Search for God, by George Bernard Shaw (London: Constable, 1932). Farleigh worked closely with Shaw on developing the illustrations for the book which proved a great commercial and artistic success.

Farleigh exhibited at the Royal Academy summer exhibitions from 1937 until 1964 and had a number of solo exhibitions at the Leicester Galleries and Lefegravevre Gallery, London, between 1938 and 1946.

In 1940 Farleigh was appointed as chairman of the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society (now the Society of Designer Craftsmen). In 1946 the Society, in cooperation with the Red Rose Guild, the Senefelder Club, the Society of Wood-Engravers and the Society of Scribes and Illuminators, formed the Crafts Centre of Great Britain (now Contemporary Applied Arts). Farleigh was chairman of the Centre from 1950 until 1964.

John Farleigh was elected a member of the Society of Wood Engravers in 1925 and a fellow of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers in 1948. In 1949 he was appointed CBE for his work in founding the Crafts Centre.

John Farleigh died on 30 March 1965.

From the guide to the John Farleigh Archive, 1958-2002, (Manchester Metropolitan University, Sir Kenneth Green Library)