Charles Meredith Bleach

(b. Portsmouth, **/06/1880 – d. **/**/****). One C.M. Bleach took the role of Dalmayne in the film version of the George H. Cossins novel Isban Israel: a South African story. Directed by Joseph Albrecht, it was released as Isban (1919) in South Africa, but shown elsewhere as The Buried City. At this stage nothing else is known about him for certain, but there was a Captain Charles Meredith Bleach who was an official war artist during World War II. Born in England, he was a pupil of John Henry Amshewitz, who himself lived in South Africa between 1916 and 1922, and again from 1936 to 1942 (he replaced Denis Santry as cartoonist on the Rand Daily Mail and the Sunday Times and died in Muizenberg). Bleach served in both the South African War and World War I, and was appointed war artist in December 1940. He would have been about 40 if he was the C.M. Bleach who acted in Isban. One source describes him as a soldier-artist and Esmé Berman identifies Bleach as a marine painter. During the 1940s he moved from Johannesburg to Clovelly on the False Bay coast and in 1958 he was still living there. He may have been married twice, first to Louisa Landau (divorced 1925) and then to Eva Eliza Seton Lorimer. A number of his paintings are in the Jeffreys Collection at the Western Cape Archives and Records Service and others can be viewed on the internet. (FO)

Sources

Berman, Esmé - Art & artists of South Africa

Le Roux, André I. & Fourie, Lilla - Filmverlede: geskiedenis van die Suid-Afrikaanse speelfilm

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