Gerald Spencer Pryse

Welsh watercolorist, printmaker and poster designer Gerald Spencer Pryse took part in the 1928 Amsterdam Art competitions, in Los Angeles in 1932 he received an Honorable Mention in the category Prints, Posters, Drawings. The unknown work was named Greyhound Course. However, the oil painting of the same title submitted in 1928 is reproduced in the Amsterdam art catalog. In 1928 Pryse also entered a lithograph titled Courses de Lévriers (Greyhound Course), which may be identical with the one receiving an award four years later. The Knock-Out is probably the 30 x 32 cm colored lithograph Out (Boxing Match). The Polar Bear Hunt is another colored lithograph. part of his poster series for the 1924 British Empire Exhibition.

Pryse was a soldier in World War I and later became a war artist. As a youngster he was educated privately before going on to study in London and Paris, and was then a founding member of the journal The Neolith, and worked for the magazines Punch, the Strand Magazine and The Graphic.

He first exhibited his work at the Venice International Exhibition in 1907. During World War I Pryse served as an officer with the King’s Royal Rifle Corps, and was awarded the MC, mentioned in dispatches, and was twice wounded. When there was a lull in hostilities he captured life in the trenches in watercolor drawings. He also designed a number of posters including several published by Frank Pick for the Underground Electric Railway in London, as well as for the Labour Party, The British Red Cross, and for the Empire Marketing Board after being commissioned for the 1924 British Empire Exhibition to provide a series of lithographs highlighting the diversity of life in the Empire. One of his daughters, Tessa Spencer Pryse, became a well-known landscape painter, against her father’s wishes.