Selection of Brian Stonehouse's fashion illustrations.
Born in Devon, Brian Stonehouse (1918–1998) spent his childhood in France but returned to England in 1932 to study at Ipswich School of Art. He was conscripted into the Royal Artillery at the outbreak of war in 1939. Disguised as a French art student, a B2 suitcase radio concealed within his artist’s box, Stonehouse survived four months between July and October 1942 inside occupied France before being arrested by the Vichy French and Gestapo. A natural survivor, he gained brief respites from slave labour by appealing to the vanity of his captors, sketching portraits of them and their families. After Stonehouse was liberated by the US Army on 29th April 1945 he was awarded a military MBE and continued to assist the military with interrogations at the War Tribunals in Germand. General Eisenhower considered Stonehouse to have had ‘one of the most amazing experiences of the war.’ In 1952, Stonehouse became the first new fashion illustrator to be employed by American Vogue since the beginning of the War. Interest in fashion was strong after the drab War Years and Stonehouse found himself in the thick of fashion illustration’s golden decade. (x)
