Rolph Scarlett: Painter, Designer, Jeweller

M. Wayne Cunningham is a past executive director of the Saskatchewan
Arts Board and the former director of Academic and Career Programs at
East Kootenay Community College.

Judith Nasby is the curator and director of the Macdonald Stewart Art
Centre and an adjunct professor in the University of Guelph’s School
of Fine Arts. The aim of her monograph on the 75-year career of
Guelph-born painter, jeweller, and industrial and stage designer Rolph
Scarlett “is to bring the work of this previously little-known,
multi-talented artist to the attention of the public and of the museum
and academic communities.”

In addition to a biography, Nasby provides a chronological survey of
the artist’s achievements in the four artistic avenues of his career.
She describes the various movements—naturalism, abstractionism,
theosophy, modernism, and postmodernism—that influenced Scarlett and
his creativity. She also notes that although he “designed everything
from sofas to refrigerators,” produced laudatory designs for theatre
and motion pictures, and had 60 of his works purchased by the Solomon R.
Guggenheim Museum (“one of the largest acquisitions of a Canadian
artist’s work by an international museum”), he was relatively
unknown in his native Canada.

The more than 100 plates and photographs in Nasby’s monograph provide
evidence of her contention that Scarlett deserves wider recognition for
his achievements. This well-written, well-designed, and comprehensively
researched tribute to Scarlett is highly recommended for anyone with an
interest in Canadian art and artists.