Fred Taylor: Wealth and Commonwealth
“New Zealand” — Maoris at a shrine
The bracing “explorer’s specials” in this post are being sold off by Sotheby’s London later this month, apparently on behalf of the local tailor Austin Reed, which evidently displayed them in the “Red Lacquer Room” of its Regent Street flagship store.
Information in the catalogue is sparse, but I’m guessing they’re a commissioned series on the far-flung reaches of what used to be the British Empire. The asking prices range from £4,000 to £8,000.
One wonders whether the sun is setting on Austin Reed as well. It’s a retailer that specialises in men’s and boys’ clothing, so you can well imagine its erstwhile interest in a collection of adventurous mini-murals to thrill its customers. Plus, the artist’s name had a familiar ring to it.
They’re all watercolours by a Canadian, Frederick Bourchier Taylor (1906-87), who’s not well known even in his homeland, even though his big brother was probably Canada’s richest man in his day: Edward Plunket Taylor, the formidable “EP”, beer-retail-media-and-mining tycoon and the man who gave horseracing the greatest sire of the 20th century, Northern Dancer.
“Burma” — The Procession of Umbrellas
The Taylor boys were born wealthy in Ottawa. Grandad handed his Brading Brewery over to EP, who promptly stitched it together with 20-odd others to make Canadian Breweries Ltd, the biggest suds-maker in the world.
Then he founded the massive investment firm Argus Corp, and grabbed Canadian Food Products, Massey-Harris, Orange Crush, Standard Chemical, Dominion Stores, Domtar Paper, Standard Broadcasting and Hollinger Mines.
“British Honduras”
EP set up one of the planet’s first gated communities, Lyford Cay in the Bahamas. His Windfields Farm in Oshawa, Ontario, where he bred his horses (now home to the Canadian Film Centre), was where the British royal family stayed when they came to the colonies.
Somehow in the late ’50s he found time to serve as president of what was then called the Art Gallery of Toronto.
Where was Fred all this time? Becoming a communist, which really must have pissed off his filthy-rich sibling!
At least that’s what it says in John Virtue’s biography “Fred Taylor: Brother in the Shadows”. Apparently they feuded about it for two decades.
Virtue also revealed that Fred tended to boil over. He once pulled a Dick Cheney, shooting and wounding a rival artist while hunting, and people were never quite sure if it was an accident. See the rest.
