Austin Osman Spare (30 December 1886 – 15 May 1956) was an English artist and occultist who worked as both a draughtsman and a painter. Influenced by symbolism and art nouveau, his art was known for its clear use of line, and its depiction of monstrous and sexual imagery. In an occult capacity, he developed magical techniques including automatic writing, automatic drawing and sigilization based on his theories of the relationship between the conscious and unconscious self.
Born into a working-class family in Snow Hill in London, Spare grew up in Smithfield and then Kennington, taking an early interest in art. Gaining a scholarship to study at the Royal College of Art in South Kensington, he trained as a draughtsman, while also taking a personal interest in Theosophy and Western esotericism, becoming briefly involved with Aleister Crowley and his A∴A∴. Developing his own personal occult philosophy, he wrote a series of occult grimoires, namely Earth Inferno (1905), The Book of Pleasure (1913) and The Focus of Life (1921). Alongside a string of personal exhibitions, he also achieved much press attention for being the youngest entrant at the 1904 Royal Academy summer exhibition.
After publishing a short-lived art magazine, Form, during the First World War he was conscripted into the armed forces and worked as an official war artist. Spare attempted to revive Form after the war before shifting his efforts to The Golden Hind, in partnership with Clifford Bax. Moving to various working class areas of South London over the following decades, Spare lived in poverty, but continued exhibiting his work to varying degrees of success. With the arrival of surrealism onto the London art scene during the 1930s, critics and the press once more took an interest in his work, seeing it as an early precursor to surrealist imagery. Losing his home during the Blitz, he fell into relative obscurity following the Second World War, although he continued exhibiting till his death in 1956.
Spare's spiritualist legacy was largely maintained by his friend, the Thelemite author Kenneth Grant in the latter part of the 20th century, and his beliefs regarding sigils provided a key influence on the chaos magic movement and Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth. Spare's art once more began to receive attention in the 1970s, due to a renewed interest in art nouveau in Britain, with several retrospective exhibitions being held in London.
Biography
Childhood: 1886–1900
Austin's father, Philip Newton Spare, was born in Yorkshire in 1857, and moved to London, where he gained employment with the City of London Police in 1878, being stationed at Snow Hill Police Station. Austin's mother, Eliza Osman, was born in Devon, the daughter of a Royal Marine, and married Philip Newton Spare at St Bride's Church in Fleet Street in December 1879. The Spare's first child to survive was John Newton Spare, born in 1882, with William Herbert Spare following in 1883 and then Susan Ann Spare in 1885.
The couple's fourth surviving child, Austin Osman Spare was born shortly after four o'clock on the morning of 30 December 1886. Spare attended St. Agnes School, attached to a prominent High Anglican church, and as a child he was brought up within the Anglican denomination of Christianity. Taking an interest in drawing, from about the age of 12, he began taking evening classes at Lambeth School of Art under the tutorship of Philip Connard.
Artistic training: 1900–1905
In 1900, Spare began working as a designer at Powell's glass-working business in Whitefriars Street, which had links to the Arts and Crafts movement and William Morris. In the evenings he attended the Lambeth School of Art. Two visitors to Powell's, Sir William Blake Richmond and FH Richmond RBA, came across some of Spare's drawings, and impressed, they recommended him for a scholarship to the Royal College of Art (RCA) in South Kensington. He achieved further attention when his drawings were exhibited in the British Art Section of the St. Louis Exposition and the Paris International Exhibition, and in 1903 he won a silver medal at the National Competition of Schools of Art, where the judges, who included Walter Crane and Byam Shaw, praised his "remarkable sense of colour and great vigour of conception."