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Margaret MacGregor Angus (9 November 1904 – 28 October 1993) was a British painter, designer and teacher. Born in Chile, she spent her career in Britain.
Angus had a great love of the outdoor life – camping and hiking – and was an intrepid traveller with her rucksack on her back. She eschewed a bourgeois lifestyle for places without modern conveniences, such as Furlongs on the Sussex Downs and her bothie she bought from the artist Charles Higgins in the Outer Hebrides. In her childhood, she befriended gypsies in north London encampments and learnt a little Romani language. She travelled widely in Europe and across the Middle East to India and Pakistan, looking at patterns and popular culture. She spent a year in Indonesia on a scholarship studying folk art in Java and Bali. She went twice to the USSR, in 1932 as a delegate for the Art Masters Association, and again in the late 1960s with her friends Ursula Mommens and Pearl Binder and teachers of music, art and drama, arranged through the Society of Cultural Relations with the USSR.
Angus was also interested in mural painting and made several murals for private clients.David Bailey (2004). "Steeped in History", Illustration (Winter). Retrieved 19 January 2009. She tested her designs on demonstration lengths of lining paper. Architects who saw these encouraged her to develop a hand-printed wallpaper business. This coincided with the 1960s expansion of DIY and the development of "choose your own colour mix" vinyl emulsion paints which she used with hand-cut linoleum printing blocks. She won the Sanderson Centenary wallpaper prize but their subsequent commercial version, which had the regularity of a machine-printed design, was far less restful to the eye than the subtle changes of pigment and pressure when done by her own methods. She always wanted her designs to be a sympathetic background on which to hang pictures. She continued to print her own designs with the help of a team of willing apprentices.
Angus's paintings of the family of Ramsay MacDonald and John Piper hang in the National Portrait Gallery in London. Ramsay MacDonald with members of his family (includes Peggy Angus; Ishbel Allan MacDonald (Mrs Peterkin); Malcolm John MacDonald; Ramsay MacDonald), BBC Your paintings. Retrieved 18 January 2014. Ishbel MacDonald was a lifelong friend and Angus occasionally stayed at Chequers with her and enjoyed the subversiveness of drawing cartoons for the Daily Worker while she was there.
Ravilious made many drawings and paintings of the Downs around Furlongs and of the cottage inside and out. He and Angus both made paintings together at the quarry and cement works at nearby Asham. Other visitors included Herbert Read, Olive Cook, Edwin Smith, Percy Horton, Maurice de Sausmarez, (2025). 9781910065846, Unicorn Press Publishing Group. ISBN 9781910065846 the architects Moholy-Nagy, Serge Chermayeff, Ernő Goldfinger, Frederick Gibberd, Maxwell Fry, and Jane Drew. Her lifelong friendship with Piper and Myfanwy Evans resulted in a long correspondence about folk art and popular art. In 1946, Angus introduced Tirzah Garwood to her second husband, radio producer Henry Swanzy.
As head of art at North London Collegiate, her own old school, she believed in setting up communal projects where pupils' works could be displayed to their best advantage. These projects also improved the school's visual environment and expanded her influence beyond the art rooms. She fostered a community of artists and designers in South East England, having a durable influence on decorative arts and fashion, for instance through Janet Kennedy. She wanted to encourage a sense of patronage and visual literacy for all, including those not thinking of following an artistic career. She remained a teacher at the school until 1970.
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Categories: 1904 Births, 1993 Deaths, 20th-century English Painters, 20th-century English Women Artists, Alumni Of The Royal College Of Art, 20th-century British Designers, British Expatriates In Chile, People Educated At North London Collegiate School, People From Muswell Hill, 20th-century British Women Painters
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