Ian Jacobs' Mexico and other matters: From Shepherd’s Bush to Rangoon and Ramallah: the Life and Works of a Quaker Artist

Note: please excuse the poor quality photos of some of the paintings below. They were taken by an inexpert photographer (Ian Jacobs) in less than ideal conditions.

Last year Jan and I scheduled a guided visit to the house-museum of Emery Walker. Walker was a socialist, an Arts & Crafts typographer, cartographer and fine art printer, a friend and collaborator of William Morris and other key figures of that movement. Jan has a family connection to Walker.

The Emery Walker House, Hammersmith, from the garden

Her grandfather, Herbert Waddams, joined Walker’s company about 1907. His employment was interrupted by WWI, but despite being wounded in 1916, and nearly dying of the Spanish flu in 1918, he returned to the company. From 1923 Herbert’s family lived in a company flat in Shepherd’s Bush, until Walker died in 1934, leaving Herbert £50.

Ron Waddams, Herbert Waddams, oil on canvas, nd

Herbert used the legacy to pay the deposit on a house. He became a manager of one of the company’s branches in 1937, and worked there for many years, eventually becoming a director of the company. Herbert retired from the company in 1954 to work as an illustrator for publishers such as Macmillan (my employer for 27 years) and Longman.

Thus, what we now call visual culture, was part of Jan’s father Ron’s life from childhood. At age 14 Ron started a two-year course at Ealing School of Art, where he was top of his class. This earned him a job as a junior at the Brilliant Sign Company, and a year later at Bert Pugh, Lettering Specialists on the Strand in central London. Thus, Ron began his long career as a commercial artist, as he styled himself, rather than as a graphic designer. However, at least by his teens Ron had discovered that his real passion was painting, as we will discover in a moment.

Ron Waddams, Self Portrait, oil on canvas, 1940

In 1940, Ron was called-up for military service in WWII. In 1942 he was drafted into a rather unorthodox unit of lithographic draughtsmen and artists, whose role would be to produce maps for British commanders, using a mobile printing press. In March 1943 Ron’s unit embarked on a ship in Greenock in Scotland, and after two months arrived in Cape Town.

Map printed in Burma, 1945


Ron Waddams, Unknown location, India?, watercolour, 1943-1945

Several weeks later they travelled on to Bombay. Ron and his colleagues criscrossed India from Dehra Dun and Massorie in the north to Bangalore in the south. In 1945 they followed British troops into Burma, at one point transporting their equipment by barge on the Chindwin river. Their travels ended in Rangoon until they were shipped home in 1946.

Roan's Rangoon typewriter

He was evidently thinking ahead to his commercial career, since in a market in Rangoon he acquired an essential piece of office equipment, a portable typewriter made by the Royal typewriter company of New York in New York City. When he returned home, Ron's brother-in-law John Brown, a metalworker, made a steel carrying case for the typewriter, possibly from surplus steel used to build aircraft during the war. Ron’s experiences in India and Burma instilled in him a great affection for India and its people. He also became a life-long pacifist, socialist and internationalist, and, eventually, a Quaker.

Ron Waddams, Betty Waddams, oil on canvas, nd

An office typewriter was not the only thing on Ron's mind as he waited in Rangoon for the long journey home. Letters from his parents kept him informed about Betty Charrosin, a young girl he had met through his church. Ron and Betty married in 1949.

Larren from the garden

Larren, front façade

Another formative experience for Ron’s art was the Festival of Britain in 1951. He once commented to me that post-War Britain was such a dull, grey place, that the colours and design aesthetics of the Festival of Britain were visually thrilling and made a lasting impression on him. He particularly admired the Sports Kiosks, temporary installations on the South Bank of the Thames, designed by two young architects, Ursula and Gordon Bowyer. In 1954 Ron, Ursula and Gordon, designed a home, Larren, for his new family in Chalfont St Giles, Buckinghamshire. Ron’s admiration of the art of Piet Mondrian is evident in the use of rectangles and cubes as the basic design elements of the house. Larren was completed in 1956.

Ron Waddams, Larren, acrylic on board, 2006, 53.7x77.5cm, Private collection

Ron Waddams, retouching a painting, Jordans Meeting House, 2009

Ron Waddams, Rye Harbour, oil on canvas,c.1958-59

Ron’s earlier work consisted of landscapes, including a few watercolours dating to his time in India (see above), portraits, mostly of family members, and self-portraits. Post-war he experimented with less realistic, more abstracted styles. These developed into the style of paintings to which he devoted much of his time in retirement. The later paintings reflected his interest in clearly delineated areas of dynamic, often vivid, colour and shape, executed in acrylic, stimulated in part, I suspect by his graphic design practice, and his design of posters for Quaker Peace and Service. These works incorporate visual motifs that are characteristic of the final decades of his life. They include abstracted, one-dimensional human figures, created with sharply delineated areas of often bright, non-realistic colours. These figures often have elongated arms and hands that curve to embrace or envelope others. This motif, I think, is in part a reference to the community principles of Quaker meetings for worship. Another common motif is a sprig of olive leaves, usually a reference to peace and to Ron’s pacifism. Similarly, some paintings incorporate one-dimensional doves.

Ron Waddams, left, Ian McFarlane, right, Jordans Meeting House exhibition of Ron's work, 2009

Ron died in 2010. After the death of his wife, Betty, his heirs faced the considerable task of placing his large body of well over a hundred paintings. Ron expressed a wish that certain paintings be kept in the family. These are currently in storage. Others were reserved by family members and now hang in several homes around the UK and in Christchurch, New Zealand. Some were sold or permanently loaned.

Ron Waddams, Seascape With Faces, acrylic on board, 2007, 61x61cm, Private collection

Ron Waddams, Lamentation and Resolution, acrylic on board, 1983, 244x122cm, the Palestinian Museum

I became closely involved in finding an appropriate home for a work that was too large for any family home. This was Lamentation and Resolution, acrylic on board, 1983, 244x122cm, a painting that reflects Ron’s profound commitment to peace, conflict resolution, human rights and the Quaker conviction that there is something of God in everyone. This painting was Ron's personal response to the injustice and inhumanity of the massacre of Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut in 1982. The number of dead men, women and children is unknown, but estimates range from 700 to 3,500. We once showed this work in a church in London. One of the visitors, a Lebanese taxi driver, was moved to tears when he saw the painting.

I wrote to the Palestinian ambassador in London, Manuel Hassassian, who enthusiastically accepted the work as a gift. Our Sunninghill framing shop, The Circle Gallery, made their largest ever frame. Ron’s friend Ian McFarlane hired a van, and we delivered the painting to the tiny building of the Palestinian Mission (they are not allowed an embassy because the UK government does not recognize Palestine as a state). Ambassador Hassassian asked us to take the painting to his office on the first floor, but it was too large to go up the stairs, so it was hung in the reception area.

Left to right: Ian McFarlane, Anna Saif, Jan and Ian Jacobs, Manuel Hassassian, Omar al Qattan, Palestinian Mission, London, 2017

A few days later, Ian, Jan and I returned to meet ambassador Hassassian, who had invited to join us Omar al Qattan, who runs a charitable arts and culture foundation in London and Palestine. Omar suggested that Ron’s painting really belonged in the Palestinian Museum (http://www.palmuseum.org/language/english) in Ramallah. This began a long and complicated process, accomplished with the able help of the energetic communications officer of the mission, Anna Saif. Omar had alerted us to the difficulties of sending a painting to a museum under occupation. Anna found a transport company that packed and delivered Lamentation and Resolution to Tel Aviv (nothing can be delivered directly to Palestine). There, tax had to be paid on the gift (we had been obliged to declare a monetary value to the Israeli authorities). It was then loaded on to a specially authorized vehicle, taken to the border between Israel and the West Bank, to be loaded there on to another authorized vehicle. Finally, after many months the museum sent us photos of the painting safely stored in the only climate-controlled museum building in Palestine.

Lamentation and Resolution, detail. Note the embracing arms and olive leaves

Before the painting embarked on its long journey, I visited the mission to take some photos of details. The receptionist commented to me that the painting made her very sad. This puzzled me, since I saw it as a work of colourful hope for the future. As we discussed her reaction, I learned that she is Lebanese. She did not see the colours that draw my eyes to the work. Instead she saw the areas of grey and black, in which the only human element are shadowy heads (or skulls). Ron always refused to explain what his paintings “were about”. He would reply that we should decide for ourselves what a painting means to us. For a British man in his 60s, for whom Sabra and Shatila represents a shameful violation of human rights in a far away place, the colours of the work drew his eyes away from the darker meanings. Those images were all that a Lebanese, for whom the subject matter was highly personal, could see.