My friend Ronald Wright, who has died aged 91, was an artist, writer, model, magazine illustrator and spiritualist healer. He blazed a trail for gay art, and went to jail for it in 1960. Later, a new generation was able to appreciate his work.
Ron was born in Puckeridge, Hertfordshire, to Frederick “Scottie” Wright, a gas fitter, and his wife, Ada (nee Lodge), a cinema cleaner. The young Ron spent much of his youth idolising and sketching movie stars.
Conscripted to the army in 1946, Ron found himself in the Pay Corps in Manchester. Spotting Ron’s talent for portraiture, an army officer, Colonel Herbert Buckmaster, introduced him to friends in the theatre world. Ron drew portraits of film legends including Vivien Leigh, Marlene Dietrich and Mae West, always making sure they signed the pictures before he left.
As a young gay man in the restrictive 1950s Ron began creating clever and sometimes risque illustrations for popular health and fitness magazines Male Classics, Adonis, Body Beautiful and Fizeek. He also set up a mail order picture service, Berkley Studios, posting sketches to clients all over the world. In 1960 he launched his own magazine, Sir Gay, which was eventually renamed Sir G because being gay was illegal in Britain at the time.
His work, though, led to Ron’s arrest in 1960 after a nosey postman reported him. In a Britain before the recommendations of the Wolfenden report were imlemented, his artwork was seen as indecent and he was sentenced to 18 months in prison. Life after prison was difficult as publishers dropped him. And so he began a new career as an artist’s model. At this he was hugely successful for more than 10 years, working as a life model at the Royal Academy, Slade School of Art, Sir John Cass School of Art (now London Metropolitan University) and St Martins (now University of the Arts London). At one time he was called upon to pose as the body double for a Rudolf Nureyev model at Madame Tussaud’s.
In the late 1970s Ron became a spiritualist and wrote a series of books on the subject. In 1990 he published his autobiography, Flesh: The Great Illusion.
In 1998 he retired to a bungalow in Watton-at-Stone, Hertfordshire. His house was an ornamental pleasure palace of gold, velvet and mirrors, filled to bursting with ceramic, marble and crystal trinkets, with one wall dedicated to the signed movie portraits. He spent the last 15 years of his life drawing, writing and travelling to give talks about his life, including at the V&A, in bookshops and at gay festivals.
An exhibition in 2010 at the Schwartz Gallery in London introduced Ron’s artistry to a new generation without the constraints of prohibition. And in 2014, Hertford Museum held a retrospective of his work.
