At the website of that splendid publisher of the fantastic Side Real Press there is a feature on Decadent Illustrators which celebrates the fine Beardsleyesque illustrations by Ronald Balfour for an edition of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam issued by Constable in 1920. The languorous, intricate and erotic designs are remarkable for a young artist in his early twenties.
I chose a few of the designs to illustrate my essays on lost works of the Eighteen Nineties, presented in Wraiths and What Became of Dr Ludovicus (Zagava, 2014; new edition, 2015). However, as the Side Real commentary notes, very little seems to be known about Ronald Balfour.
As we have remarked before, lost artists of the fantastic are even harder to find out about than neglected authors. Indeed, in the absence of biographical information, the artist seems to be sometimes confused with Ronald Edmond Balfour (1904-1945), the historian. I am afraid I have forgotten now quite how I followed various leads to identifying a few basic facts about the artist, but this is what I found.
It seems reasonably certain that he is the Ronald Balfour who was the third and youngest son of Brigadier General Sir Alfred Granville Balfour, K.B.E., C.B., (1858- 1936) and Frances Elizabeth Simpson (d. 1936). An older brother, John, died in infancy and the second brother James was killed in World War 1 in 1917.
The artist, full name Ronald Egerton Balfour, was born in 1896 and died on 17 January 1941, apparently in a car accident. He had married Deirdre Phyllis Ulrica Hart-Davis on 24 April 1930, and they had two daughters, Susan Mary Balfour born 30 March 1931and Annabel Clare Balfour born 20 October 1935.
Balfour also provided “decorations” for Thin Air: A Himalayan Interlude by Constance Bridges (Brewer & Warren, New York, 1930). There is a suggestion that he may have accompanied the author to the Himalayas to make the illustrations. A copy of C.P. Skrine’s Chinese Central Asia (London: Methuen, 1926) has been catalogued with his signature, perhaps suggesting an interest in the region.
The Victoria & Albert Museum online catalogue includes the tantalising information that they hold a pencil drawing of a robot by Balfour, but it is not reproduced and they evidently have no further information about him. It would be interesting to know if this was intended for another illustrated edition. Capek’s R U R, which introduced the word ‘robot’ was published in Prague in 1920.
It seems unusual that Balfour apparently published no other illustrations than the Rubaiyat and the Himalayan book, and that so little seems to have survived about him. Perhaps there may still be fleeting allusions in unexpected memoirs, or designs in periodicals yet to be discovered.
Mark Valentine
