The mystery young cricketer shown in Letters, ATG No 2580.
George Harry Warr was born in Sheffield on January 4, 1877. In 1890 he received, along with Omar Ramsden (1873-1939), a free studentship to the Sheffield School of Art, where he won a number of awards for drawing.
Warr worked for Walker & Hall of Sheffield and in 1901 he designed the gold chain for the city’s new Lady Mayoress.
Warr exhibited his painting The Village Cobbler at the Royal Academy in 1907 (the painting was later shown at the Worcester Art Gallery) and later had four works exhibited at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool.
Court case
On October 26, 1918, he was fined £5 and ordered to be handed over to the military authorities for being an absentee under the Military Service Act. He told the court he had exhibited at the RA but at great sacrifice he had only painted one portrait since because he had taken up Mission work: “All my spare time is given to soul-saving work, which is of the highest national importance.
“It is the only way of keeping nations from killing and bleeding each other to death.”
Warr said he would rather die in prison than give up his preaching.
He shouted at the chairman: “All that take the sword shall perish by the sword. No murderer would enter Heaven. Vengeance is Mine, said the Lord.”
Warr was often seen at Pier Head, Liverpool, bird whistling (it was once broadcast on the BBC) to gather a crowd before he evangelised them.
He did take up art again and it is on record that every Tuesday lunch time in the 1950s he would carry his sketches down to the Gladstone Dock gates to show the dockers and then preach to them about God.
Sometimes he would nail his paintings (flowers, mountain scenes, portraits) to the dock fence and would often sketch the dockers.
Anthony J Lester, FRBA, FRSA
International Association of Art Critics: The Critics’ Circle
School badge
The blazer badge of the Two Lions counter passant looks to be the old school badge for Calday Grange Grammar School on the Wirral.
Alumni include Daniel Craig.
Sorry to muddy the waters.
Jon Potter
