Malcolm Arbuthnot

Malcolm Arbuthnot (Malcolm Lewin Stockdale Parson) Born in Surrey, he was apprenticed at the age of sixteen to a painter of cats, but photography had greater appeal for him. He took various clerical jobs during the 1890s to support his photography. Arbuthnot was elected to the Linked Ring in 1907 and became one of its more influential members. He married a Kodak heiress and became manager of Kodak's Liverpool branch in 1912, where he resumed his interest in painting and lectured on Van Gogh. In 1914 he established a studio on New Bond Street, London, and worked as a fashionable portrait photographer until 1926, when he moved to France to study sculpture. He then settled in Jersey and concentrated on watercolour painting, to great success.

Text © National Portrait Gallery, London