John Dronsfield

John Dronsfield (1900-1951) was a graphic artist, poet, painter and stage designer. (Also known as John Marsden Dronsfield)

Born John Marsden Dronsfield, in Lancashire, England and studied briefly at Manchester Art School. Otherwise he was mainly self-taught.

Short Artist Biography

- 1918 John Dronsfield enlisted in Young Soldiers’ Battalion – Cheshire Regiment.
- 1919 Discharged as physically unfit.
- 1923 John Dronsfield began stage-designing with Sybil Thorndike; worked n London as a stage-designer and advertising artist.
- 1939 John Dronsfield eettled in South Africa – Cape Town. Built a reputation as an imaginative stage-designer for ballet and straight drama.
- 1942 John Dronsfield published ‘Non-Europeans Only’ – a book of drawings of the Cape Coloured community.
- 1945 – 1948 John Dronsfield worked with Gwen Ffrancogn-Davies and Marda Vanne in theatrical productions which were a major contribution to the development of theatre in South Africa. Also wrote incidental music for ‘The Merry Wives of Windsor’ Member of International Art Club, South Africa. 
- 1951 Death by suicide.
- 1955 Posthumous publication of a collection of his verses and satires by Oxford University Press. His friends, led by Dennis Bullough & David Schrire, published two portfolios of reproductions of his graphic studies, entitled ‘African Improvisations’.

Art Exhibitions

- 1939 First one-man art exhibition, Cape Town.
- 1948 Overseas Exhibition of South African Art, Tate Gallery.
- 1950 Venice Biennale.
- 1955 Memorial Exhibition, South African National Art Gallery, Cape Town.
- 1967 Memorial Exhibition, Wolpe Gallery, Cape Town.

Public Art collections

South African National Art Gallery, Cape Town; William Humphreys Art Gallery, Kimberley; Durban Art Gallery; Africana Museum, Johannesburg; University of Wits Art Galleries.

Source

Berman, E. 1994. Art & Artists of South Africa . Southern Book Publishers.

Contemporary South African Artists Art Galleries in South Africa

He settled in Cape in 1949

He and the arts critic and author Denis Hatfield worked closely together in the 1940s, particularly on his publications.

Among his publications were:

Non-Europeans Only : Thirty-six Drawings by John Dronsfield (Cape Town: Denis Bullough, 1942; The Work of John Dronsfield edited by Denis Hatfield (Johannesburg: SA Architectural Record, 1944); Satires and Verses by John Dronsfield, edited by Denis Hatfield Bullough (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1955)