Exhibition note

Pallant House Gallery has a reputation for rediscovering and reinstating artistic titans from the past, and in its spectacular exhibition on Barnett Freedman (1901–58) it has once again surpassed itself.

Freedman, barely known today, was a famous illustrator and artist in his time. He started off attending night classes at St Martin’s School of Art, and in due course began work as a junior draftsman to a mason. In 1916 he went to work for an architect, where his main employment was lettering the long lists of the dead for war memorials.

He managed to get a scholarship to the Royal College of Art with the help of its Principal, William Rothenstein. The rigor, width, and breadth of this education at the rca set him on his path for life. He was tutored on geometric principles, on perspective and anatomy, on...