Austin Osman Spare

Halloween is a time when we contact those who have passed from this plane. In legend, the veils between the worlds are thin and communion with the dead is possible. I thought the Samhain edition of The Mirror of Isis would be a good place to introduce a prolific London artist who drew inspiration from the depths of the unconscious and the ancestors and beyond to the spirit realms. There are many aspects to this prolific artist’s life, here I present a small glimpse.

The magical artist Austin Osman Spare was born at Snow Hill, near Smithfield, London, on December 30th 1886. He would have liked it to have been 31st December, preferably towards midnight, for dramatic effect. He became a celebrated artist, hailed as a genius by the Royal Academy, and was highly original and expansive in both style, subject and medium. For a while, he was the darling of the snooty West End art world.

His birth place, Smithfield was a bloody area. It had a centuries old meat market and a history as a place of execution for dissidents and heretics. One wonders how the energies and vibrations of such a site would affect the sensitive and psychic child. Certainly Austin Osman Spare would not have objected to the labels ‘dissident’ and ‘heretic’ later in life!

From early childhood, Austin drew constantly. He displayed a prodigious talent. His potential was recognised by his parents early on, and they decided that he should be encouraged to develop his gift, no matter how unconventional a career choice for a lower middle class lad, and in spite of the considerable cost of materials.

The young Austin was curiously shy of letting others see his work. Perhaps this was because even then they contained aspects of the fantastic and also of the world that was mostly ‘unseen’. So it was due to the instinct and effort of his father, a policeman, that his work came to the attention of the art world.

Prestige soon followed. At fourteen, Austin had won his first scholarship, and at fifteen, had a scholarship to the Royal College of Art. He had a picture exhibited in Paris, and at seventeen, his father sent some of his pictures to the Royal Academy. One was chosen to be exhibited. His first solo exhibition was at the prestigious Bruton Gallery in the West End in 1907. He was hailed as a genius.

In this fulcrum of heady success, Austin was becoming increasingly interested in esoteric ideas, delving into the spirit realms. He was developing his own spiritual system, with its unique terminology, techniques, formulae, and philosophy. His twin pillars were belief and desire. His automatic drawing was part of this. Spare said his automatic drawings sprang from his unconscious mind. He said, “What happens is that something is transmitted to me – perhaps from the dead or from my past experience from other lives I have lived.”

Of the Goddess, Isis appeared in several of his works, as did Mut, Ishtar and Gaia and the Delphic Oracle, who manifested as his female spirit guide.

In 1954, the Spiritualist magazine Two Worlds published an article on Austin Spare by Philip Paul. He mentions that Spare has just embarked on a series of pictures of séance manifestations. At the time, Spare said of séances,

"A lot of what appears to be fraud is not really fraud at all."

On fraudulent mediumship, Spare concluded, “My impression was that many mediums had experienced phenomena but they had no control over it, and in trying to relive the experience, they resorted to fraud.”

Spare had an ability to contact and see the realms of ghosts, spirits guides, nature spirits, ancestral spirits and auras. The surrealist artist and writer Ithell Colquhoun called him a natural psychic. He had a penchant for automatic writing and drawing. While sitting in the dark, directed by artists in the spirit world, he sometimes painted the evolution of the soul in the afterlife.

Many of Spare’s pictures contain elements of the spirit world. A portrait of a film star, for instance, would include the swirls of her aura and her familiars and spirit guides. The artist could see them and added them as an integral part of the person. They were as real as an eye or a hand. A picture of a medium going into trance would be complete with ectoplasm draping her head. He would produce in bright pastel a face with the spirits of its ancestors trailing back through the ages. A figure would be cloaked in ectoplasm, manifesting from the mouth of The Cave of the Mysteries. He also explored the ideas of reincarnation, with the winged spirit leaving the body, ascending and then returning to the living.

Although Spare’s interest in the spirit world started in his formative years at the end of the 19th Century and the beginning of the 20th, these motifs appeared in his work on and off until the end of his life in 1956. We know that he used pictorial magazines and books as a tool as most artists do, and he was inspired by spirit photography (real and posed). Spirit photography was ‘all the rage’ and was published in books and periodicals, and through his close Spiritualist friends and patrons he would have had access to and been familiar with the images of this strange phenomena.

Spare had a fascination for far off lands and cultures as well, ones which he could never visit but were brought alive for him from the pages of the National Geographic and from books. He painted these exotic landscapes with their shamanic scenes and tribal peoples with ease, as if he had been able to step into them with his easel and understand perfectly what was happening.

Spare had turned his back on the superficiality and snobbery of the West End art world, and therefore turned his back on fame and fortune. He moved to South London, where he lived in dire poverty, among what he considered ‘real people’. He made his money painting the local London characters. He held his exhibitions in pubs, and would sell his pictures for a few pounds.

Spare attended sÈances and enjoyed them, although they didn’t answer the deeper questions for him. He continued to experiment with his own spiritual practices and developed his automatic drawing techniques. He had a keen interest in science and evolution, which he saw as part of a natural continuum with the mystical realms. He was interested in radio telegraphy and the emerging science of radio waves, and became friends with Britain’s most esteemed scientist of his time, the Spiritualist Sir Oliver Lodge.

Spare produced a stunning likeness of his friend after Lodge’s passing, claiming that he materialised Lodge to sit for the picture.   Sir Oliver was knighted for his scientific genius, and was a major figure in Psychic Research. He had turned to Spiritualism after the death of his son Raymond who was killed at Ypres in WW1. Raymond was born in the same year as Austin Spare.

Sir Oliver made a huge contribution to the understanding of radio-telegraphy and transmitted radio-signals one year before Marconi, and as early as 1897 was attempting to detect what we now call cosmic rays. In 1925, he published ‘Ether and Reality’ putting forward a hypothesis that there is a fourth state, which he called ether, which acted as a communication channel to transmit vibrations between mind and matter. He proposed that this state, which vibrated at a different frequency to solid matter as we know it, could fleetingly reveal itself in the form of ectoplasm. Here was someone who accepted that there was an unseen world around us and, as a major physicist, saw the supernatural world as an extension of the known physical realm that could be contacted by scientific experiments – and by mediums. Spare loved discussing these subjects with Lodge, both before and beyond the grave. Both saw the world unseen as a continuum, not a separate reality, and wanted to find the bridge, and understand the phenomena better in the light of science.

One of Spare’s life long patrons and friends was the legendary journalist, socialist and Spiritualist Hannen Swaffer, (Swaff) who collected Spare’s work for fifty years. Swaff was also celebrated as a committed anti-fascist. It is from Swaffer that we hear the story of how in 1936, a self-portrait of Spare came to the attention of Hitler. Hitler, who’d fancied himself as an artist himself, was impressed. Sharing a moustache in common with Austin, he was taken with the physical resemblance with himself! He invited Austin Spare to Germany to paint his portrait, thinking the artist would be honoured. Austin declined the invitation in no uncertain terms, ending with “If you are superman, let me be forever animal.”

Hitler unknowingly had his revenge, for in 1941, during the Blitz, Austin’s humble home was destroyed and he lost every single possession. Along with the trauma, he also suffered arm injuries, and was unable to paint. He re-learnt over the next few years, even going to classes, and emerged as prolific and surprising as ever.

Another friend and patron was Maurice Barbanell, the founder of Psychic News and Editor of Two Worlds for three decades. Maurice was the medium in the famous Spiritualist group Hannen Swaffer’s Home Circle, through whom the native American spirit guide Silver Birch communicated his wisdom. Spare also had a Native American spirit guide, Black Eagle, whom he painted.

Spare had a deep love of animals, and although poor himself, looked after many of the local stray cats. He was appalled by cruelty to animals, and the bleak life of the working horses of London. Perhaps this was an echo picked up by the psychic child born near Smithfield, where there had been there had been a horse market for hundrerds of years. Austin was an early member of the RSPCA and wore his RSPCA badge with pride. He had been known to ask for donations to be given to them if he had done someone a favour.

Austin Spare also showed his compassionate side when he painted Swaff’s picture. Swaff was not the most physically attractive man, and was self-conscious of this. Spare’s gift was such that he painted Swaff’s picture with empathy, and whilst being true to the likeness, made him attractive by bringing out the innate character of this great man. Not only could the artist often see the spirits around his subjects, he could see the inner soul and manifest it in pencil and pastel.

Hannen Swaffer made a wonderful speech for Spare at the opening of his last exhibition in London’s Archer gallery in 1955. The following year Spare was admitted to hospital with peritonitis. He realised he was dying and he asked not for his next of kin to be informed, only Swaffer, Spiritualist and friend.

Although remembered in obituaries by his journalist friends, Spare had passed into relative obscurity long before his passing. The last thirty years have seen a growing revival of interest in his work. It is now eagerly collected by a growing number of admirers, commanding ever-higher prices at auction. He is finding the critical acclaim and recognition from art historians and writers once again. At Halloween, I sure he can glimpse through the veil at this renewed appreciation, and I am sure he is very pleased with this!

About the Author: Caroline Wise has been a member of the Fellowship of Isis for 21 years. She is Priestess, Hierophant, ArchDruidess, Grand Dame Commander, Solar Alchemist and member of the ArchPriesthood Union, ArchDruid Union and Grand Commander Union within the FOI, and a Priestess in the Temple of Isis, Geyserville, California. She helped to found several lyceums, groves and priories within the Fellowship. Caroline organized the first FOI Convention which took place in London in September of 1990. She has been active in the esoteric community for many years. Her research on the Goddess Elen is due to come out in book form later this year. Caroline is a regularly featured contributor in the Mirror of Isis. She is a member of the Star of Elen Advisory Board, the Circle of Isis Advisory Board and a founding member of the Muses Symposium.