Clifford Ellis

Clifford Wilson Ellis (1907–1985) was a British printmaker, painter, designer and art teacher. Ellis is notable both for the work he did for the Recording Britain project during the Second World War and for his role in the development of art teaching. He frequently worked with his wife, artist Rosemary Ellis, and they signed their joint work C&RE.

Biography

Ellis was born in Bognor Regis, Sussex. He came from an artistic family: his grandfather had been an artist and his uncle, Ralph Ellis, was a designer who had studied at the Slade School of Art. After a year at Saint Martin's School of Art, Clifford Ellis studied illustration at the Regent Street Polytechnic in London between 1924 and 1927. He then spent a year taking a post-graduate teacher training course before gaining a diploma in the history of art from the University of London.

In 1928, Ellis returned to Regent Street Polytechnic as a teacher and continued to teach there until 1936. Their work included posters for London Transport and the General Post Office, and several designs for book covers and dust jackets, most notably for the long-running New Naturalist series published by Collins. Together, they also designed mosaics for walls and floors, including the floor of the entrance hall of the British Pavilion at the Paris International Exhibition of 1937.

After the war, Ellis and Rosemary continued with their artistic collaborations. In 1946 they designed the entrance area to the Britain Can Make It exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum and between 1945 and 1982 they designed 86 covers and dust jackets for the New Naturalist series of books and monographs. The couple signed these jackets, and other works, C&RE to reflect their joint and equal involvement. Ellis continued, until 1972, as head of the Bath Academy of Art. In this role, by developing a pioneering art syllabus and recruiting highly skilled artists as teachers, Ellis had a lasting influence on the development of many artists. Works by Ellis were included in the 1983 Landscape in Britain exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, the 1988 Art Deco Underground exhibition at the London Transport Museum and a retrospective of his work was held in 1989 at the Michael Parkin Gallery in London.