Known as the Wimbledon Bardot, Pauline Boty was a student at Wimbledon School of Art. She smashed stereotypes and confronted issues well ahead of her time, but was not given the recognition she deserved. During her tragically short life, she produced an exciting and complex body of work, commenting on pop culture, feminism and so much of the era in which she lived. Dr Sue Tate, Pauline’s biographer, will be in conversation about her life and work with BBC broadcaster and journalist Samira Ahmed at Wimbledon BookFest on Sunday 27 October.
Born in Croydon, Pauline Boty was raised amidst what her biographer, Dr Sue Tate, describes as ‘stereotypically suburban and bland’ Carshalton. The ‘bleak suburbia’ that author Edna O’Brien would lament about when reflecting on her time living on Canon Hill Lane.
The Boty home of her childhood was a far cry from the radicalism of the Pop Art movement and her later life. Boty’s father, Albert Alexander August Boty was a ‘staunch British Conservative’ who went about life with an ‘almost exaggerated ‘Englishness’’ that suppressed the Iranian origins of his family. Her mother, Veronica Stewart was descended from an Irish Catholic family and conformed to the ‘stereotypical picture of the suburban housewife’. Arthur Boty, Pauline’s brother, would later describe how his father ‘would lay down the law and she [Veronica] would have to survive.’
The most academically able of her siblings, Pauline attended Wallington County School for Girls and outperformed her two brothers at O-Level. Boty and her siblings were raised as practising Roman Catholics. They stopped attending church after their mother fell ill and without the pressure of their by-then-deceased maternal grandmother never returned. Abandoning the trappings of Catholicism marked a major shift in Boty’s life, one that moved from control to freedom. This opposition to and movement away from any institutionalised control was a trend that would be sustained throughout her life.
During her early life, Boty’s experience with the strong will of her father and the Catholic church led her to become interested in how people were controlled by society. Boty was well aware of the different expectations that befell men and women. As her and her brothers moved into early adulthood she remarked upon how ‘I think a lot of things have been imposed on men […] Women are much better off in some ways because they haven’t been told you have to get out and get a job and be masterful.’
Nonetheless, Boty still had to fight her corner in order to pursue art as a career. In 1954 she won a scholarship from Wimbledon College of Art. Following dissent from her father who did not consider art a ‘proper job’, Pauline was eventually granted permission to follow her passion. Her brother John was not allowed the same flexibility and despite his own wishes to become an artist, trained to be an accountant with the family business.
Thus, at 16, Boty took the train to South-West London and enrolled at Wimbledon College of Art. This proved a great success; As Tate describes, “Boty flourished at Wimbledon.”
After completing a two-year Intermediate Certificate in Arts and Crafts in 1956, Boty began a National Diploma specialising in Stained Glass. It was at this point that Boty came under the tutelage of Charles Carey, who had recently accepted his first teaching post at Wimbledon. Carey had exposed his students to a survey of Modernist painters and would prove to be a phenomenal influence on Boty.
Carey encouraged his students to explore mass cultural imagery within their work, traces of which can be seen in Boty’s collage work. Through Robyn Denny, Carey came into contact with Peter Blake, a behemoth of British Pop whose collection of pop-culture ephemera was varied and impressive. Carey soon encouraged his students to use collage as ‘a way of importing immediate and contemporary imagery.’ In response, Boty and her peers began tearing down posters and squirrelling away tickets and labels.
While some have suggested that Boty’s move towards stained glass on completion of her Intermediate Certificate was on account of women being shunned from traditional painting courses, Tate suggests that Boty abandoned the Department of Painting at Wimbledon because it ‘was not run by the most lively of people’ and the stained-glass school would bear a livelier crowd of students more subversive and urgent.
What is certain however is the incredible ambition that Boty possessed even during her early days at Wimbledon. Beryll Cotton, a friend and fellow student of Boty’s notes how from the very beginning of her artistic career, Boty saw herself as different from the crowd:
Even at that age she would say ‘Look at all these other students, they are just here filling in time before they get married… That’s not what I want, I want to be a painter. I’m a serious artist.’ Even then, she always had a bit of a hang-up about the position of women, she felt that women were badly treated by men, yes, she did feel that.
This ambition and dedication to creation is reflected in her involvement in life at Wimbledon College of Art. Boty was popular amongst her peers. People were drawn to her because of her confidence, her charm, and her looks, and she was christened the ‘Wimbledon Bardot’ on account of her likeness to the actress. Boty was an active figure on campus and became involved in numerous film and literature societies. She was particularly keen on New Wave cinema and the emerging music of rock and roll.
In 1958, shortly after leaving Wimbledon, Boty helped found ‘Anti-Ugly Action’ a campaign group that protested against the poor quality of contemporary British architecture. Protests included a march on Kensington Public Library, accompanied by a Dixieland jazz band
Boty found her first success while a student in Wimbledon. Her painting Untitled was exhibited in the prestigious Young Contemporaries exhibition in 1957. This show was to be hugely influential as an origin point for many of the key figures in British Pop and Boty’s work was exhibited alongside Bridget Riley.
After graduating from Wimbledon, Boty went on to The Royal College of Art where she continued to refine her artistic voice and push back against the institutionalised misogyny of the British art scene. She continued to produce both collages and paintings and became a co-founder of the British Pop Art movement. Often overlooked in the 20th century, her work rediscovered in the 1990s thanks to the work of Dr Sue Tate and curator David Mellor. In July 2023 a Blue Plaque was erected at her former home and studio in Holland Park.
Tragically, Boty’s life was cut short when she died of a ‘malignant thymoma’ on July 1st 1966. She was aged just 28. Nonetheless, her influence on British art sustains. She remains a maverick who married classical technique with popular culture, and brought collage and stained glass into the age of mass consumerism. Her work continues to be rediscovered, reinterpreted, and recontextualised and she remains very much the Wimbledon Bardot.
by Darragh Murray