Farnham 1923 — Northampton 1992

Michael
Horsley-
Millman

Painter, war artist, industrial designer and art therapist. He crossed the world from Korea to Cuba to Montreal, and painted wherever he landed. Above all, our father.

“There is no dress rehearsal for life’s scenario.”

From his memoir, Tang of Autumn

Michael Horsley-Millman in cracked dark glasses, with a grey beard

A dedication

I dedicate this to him, for all his love. And to my siblings, so that we may all share a better insight into his life.

Cassandra Horsley

I. His life

A self-built mountain of life’s ambiguities

Michael Arthur Gordon Horsley was born in 1923 at Westfield’s, a large white-brick house above Wrecclesham, near Farnham. It was a house of parties, cavalry officers and servants, where a small boy saw far more of the staff than of his own parents. At nine he was sent away to boarding school in Littlehampton. He never did well in an exam, but he could draw.

His father would not let him go to art school. So he found his own way. He began painting in the RAF during the war and had his first exhibition in Toronto in 1942. Afterwards he took lessons from Sir Francis Rose and Augustus John, showed at the Royal Academy in 1946 and studied at Camberwell under Minton and Pasmore.

Then he kept moving: official war artist to the United Nations in Korea, designer in Tokyo, a monastery in the south of France, Berlin, Cuba, Montreal, New York. In 1963 he added Millman to his name, after his favourite uncle and grandfather. He came home to England in 1975, to Kensington, and from 1982 spent his last years in Northamptonshire.

Michael in heavy black glasses, wild grey hair lit from behind, in front of a dark, stormy painting

The weight he carried

“It hurts more to know than it does to dream.”

Chapter 2, The Yellow Chair

Pencil drawing of the old Malting House at Marshfield — The Old Malting House, Marshfield

He was not a perfect man, and he never pretended to be. He wrote with unflinching honesty about a childhood that wounded him, a family that rarely understood him, and the depression that followed him into adult life.

In the late 1950s he sought help at the Marlborough Day Hospital in London, lodging nearby with a retired nurse who became a second mother to him. Through that long, lonely recovery he kept painting. One night, in a single rented room on Gloucester Place, he saw the face of Van Gogh hanging in the air before his canvas, and it changed the direction of his life.

Out of that suffering came his life’s work with others. He became an art therapist, helping patients in psychiatric care find in paint what he had found in it himself.

II. Footsteps

Towards the sun and unknown horizons

Farnham
·
Ontario
·
London
·
Paris
·
Korea
·
Tokyo
·
Scotland
·
Malta
·
Marshfield
·
The south of France
·
Berlin
·
Havana, Cuba
·
Montreal
·
Israel
·
New York
·
Northampton

1923
Born Michael Arthur Gordon Horsley at Westfield’s, Farnham, Surrey.
1932 – 37
Boarding school at St Nicholas, Littlehampton.
1941 – 44
Aircraftman in the Royal Air Force, including 111 Squadron at Hornchurch and an air navigation school in Ontario. His first exhibition, at Hart House, University of Toronto, in 1942.
1945 – 49
Studies under Sir Francis Rose, with private lessons from Augustus John. First Royal Academy exhibit in 1946, Landscape: Kensington Square. Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts, and the Paris Salon in 1949.
1950 – 53
Official war artist to the United Nations in Korea.
1953 – 55
Industrial design consultant in Japan, including to the Tokyo Chamber of Commerce, and lecturing at the University of Tokyo. Converts to Catholicism, thinking of becoming a monk.
Late 1950s
Teaching in Scotland and Malta. Gloucester Place in London, then the Malt House at Marshfield.
1960
“Did a Van Gogh”, in his words, and withdrew to a monastery in the south of France, painting serene, reflective, impressionistic work.
1962 – 63
Berlin, and the Wall. Child of War is presented to President Kennedy. Adds Millman to his name. Travels to Cuba, paints The True Symbol, and marries the actress and model Maribel Morales.
1964 – 69
Arrives in Montreal by cattle-boat. Art therapist at the Jewish General Hospital, artist in residence at the Loyola Bonsecours Centre and a pioneer of the restoration of Old Montreal. Consultant to Mayor Jean Drapeau for Expo 67. Three children are born.
1968 – 69
Returns to Cuba to write, produce and direct the documentary Cuba Now. Israel, in June 1969.
1969 – 75
New York, where his fourth child is born.
1975 – 82
Home to England, living in Kensington, London. Research at the Université de Paris VIII with Frank Popper, the children’s recording My ABC Adventure, and work as Ideas Consultant for Pedigree Toys, where he met Madeleine Biggs, who became his second wife. Teddy Bears of Knightsbridge in 1981.
1982 – 92
Northamptonshire. Trees in snow at Yardley Hastings, reeds and swans, and at Boughton, in 1988, he begins to write his memoir.

Child of War: a weeping child in a dark coat stands behind strands of barbed wire — John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston

Typed letter signed by Michael Millman, 29 June 1963, presenting the picture to the President of the United States — His letter on the back of the painting, 29 June 1963

Berlin, June 1963

Child of War

Berlin turned him into what he called a political and social painter. His paintings of the newly built Wall carried its misery without ever slipping into poor taste.

This one, a child crying behind barbed wire, was commissioned by the German Government and presented to President John F. Kennedy on his visit to Berlin in June 1963.

It is still in the collection of the Kennedy Library in Boston, with the original letter fixed to its back.

Then Cuba, 1963

The True Symbol, dedicated to the Cuban Association of United Nations for Peace. Private collection, Spain.

Berlin series

Berlin Wall Scene, Brandenburg Gate, and two further Berlin studies.

Montreal, 1967

Man and His World

For Expo 67, the World’s Fair, he was consultant to the Mayor of Montreal, Jean Drapeau. He also drew the fair itself: twelve impressions of the pavilions, the crowds, the carousel and the tall ship in the harbour, in quick, certain black line.

III. The work

Selected paintings

View the full collection

The Yellow Chair: a black Labrador asleep in an armchair beneath a window — The Yellow Chair
With Labrador · Marshfield, late 1950s

Psychotic: figures crouched and sprawled in a bare, beamed room — Psychotic
London, c. 1960s

Apocalypse: a bare tree and swirling figures across a desolate landscape — Apocalypse
1960s

Morality: storm-swept figures beneath a dark sky — Morality
1960s

Fragments: a skeletal figure in a yellow shawl reaching out over a crowd — Fragments
1962

Berlin: figures with outstretched arms before the Wall and a watching guard — Berlin
1963

Brandenburg Gate seen through a tangle of barbed wire — Brandenburg Gate
Berlin, 1963

The True Symbol: a figure and a child among white doves, flags behind — The True Symbol
Cuba, 1963 · Private collection, Spain

Portrait of a young woman with dark tousled hair — Portrait
1963

Gloucestershire Lad: a young man seated among village rooftops — Gloucestershire Lad
Gloucestershire

Snow Scene: blue pines over a snowy clearing — Snow Scene
Canada, 1964 · Private collection

Old Canadiana: wooden houses with washing on the line — Old Canadiana 3
Canada, 1969

After Provence: white marguerites in a red pot — After Provence, Marguerites
c. 1960 · 28 × 36 in

Trees heavy with snow above a stone wall — Trees in the Snow
Northamptonshire, c. 1980s

Abstract: thick horizontal bands of red, cream and blue paint — Abstract
1991

IV. Cuttings

As others saw him

Michael at work on a huge canvas in his studio on St Paul Street, Old Montreal — At work on Faith and Consciousness, St Paul Street, Montreal · The Gazette, 13 March 1965

The Gazette, Montreal, 3 June 1965: guests examine a painting by Michael Horsley-Millman at the opening of the Loyola Bonsecours Centre — The Gazette, Montreal, 3 June 1965

“Michael Millman isn’t the sort of man to shed tears for himself.”

Raymond Heard, The Montreal Star, January 1964

The Star found him newly arrived from Cuba with his young bride, nearly penniless, wearing a dead man’s shoes bought for five dollars, and certain that artists should take on the evils of their time as Goya had.

Two years later in Saskatchewan, on a commission for the Canadian Pacific Railway, he championed the unknown prairie painter Kenneth “Casey” Jones, insisting the province should support him.

Exhibited

Hart House, Toronto · Royal Academy · Federation of British Artists · West of England Academy · Paris Salon · Museum of Art, Tokyo · Berlin International · galleries in Paris, Rome and New York

Collections

John F. Kennedy Library · Friends of the Tate Gallery · Duchess of Devonshire · Berlin Museum · Museum of Art, Tokyo · Springer Collection, Germany

All press, letters & projects

V. In his own words

Tang of Autumn

Begun at Boughton, Northampton, on 1 September 1988, and never finished. These are the pages he left us.

Introduction An Artist is Born Life as theatre, memory as a garden, and the child who remains in all of us. Chapter 1 Cultivation Westfield’s, the nursery, boarding school, and the first stirrings of an artist. Chapter 2 The Yellow Chair Breakdown and recovery in London, Van Gogh, Marshfield and a faithful dog.

A note for readers: his writing speaks plainly about childhood abuse and mental illness. Choose a chapter to read it in full.

“Our time runs out through all seasons, leaving us our Tang of Autumn, before our winter sets in.”

Michael Horsley-Millman, 1988