Additional papers of Robert Medley

This small collection contains correspondence, photographs and ephemera relating to the choreographer and dancer Rupert Doone (1903-66) and the artist Robert Medley (1905-94). Doone and Medley founded the experimental theatre group, the Group Theatre in 1931, and within this collection there are photographs of performances, ephemera and bound volumes of some of the plays the group performed in the 1930s. This material adds to the collection given by Robert Medley to the Tate Gallery in 1989 (TGA 894).

Charles Robert Owen Medley CBE, RA, (1905-94), known as Robert Medley, was an English artist who painted in both abstract and figurative styles, and who also worked as theatre designer. Robert Medley studied art at the Slade School of Fine Art and then completed his training by spending two years in Paris from 1926 to 1928. It was during this time that he met his partner with whom he spent the rest of this life with, dancer, choreographer and theatre director, Rupert Doone (1903-66).

Medley began to exhibit paintings with the London Group from 1929, and went on to hold his first solo show at the Cooling Galleries in 1931. In 1932, he and Doone jointly founded the Group Theatre, for which Medley served as artistic director, either designing productions himself or supervising designs that included masks by Henry Moore.

During the Second World War, Medley served as an Air Raid Precautions Warden until he was offered a three month commission by the War Artists' Advisory Committee, to go to France to record troop landings for the British Expeditionary Force. He was later sent to Cairo, Egypt, where he was part of the Camouflage Corps.

After the war, he taught at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts (later known as Camberwell College of Arts). He later became a visiting lecturer at the Slade School of Art, and then returned there full time in 1958 as Head of the Department of Theatre Design, a post which he held until 1966. In 1982, he was appointed CBE and in 1985 he was elected to the Royal Academy.

This collection has been arranged as follows:

1) Rupert Doone

2) Robert Medley

3) Group Theatre

OPEN

For further papers of Robert Medley see TGA 894.