Muralist, theatrical and mosaic designer, prolific book illustrator and painter, born in Cheveley, near Newmarket, Suffolk. Aged four he moved to the family home, Foxwold, near Brasted, Kent, when his father, the future Sir Charles Pym, inherited it. Roland’s brother was the architect John Pym. Although he travelled widely, Kent remained Roland’s home, where he died at Edenbridge. After Eton College, Pym studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, 1928-32, specialising in theatre design, where he was a friend of William Townsend, in whose Journals he appears and is pictured. In the 1930s Pym showed briefly at the Leicester and Redfern Galleries. Pym launched his mural painting career by winning in competition a decoration for the refreshment room at Lord’s.
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Particular features of Pym’s murals were trompe l’oeil, nostalgia and mannered figures and landscapes not unlike the work of Rex Whistler, with whom he was acquainted. Prior to World War II, Pym was commissioned to paint figures in blank windows at Biddesden House, Wiltshire. This was the start of a string of decorative and book commissions for the Guinness family, ranging over Bryan W Guinness’ The Story of Johnny and Jemima, 1936, and The Story of Priscilla and the Prawn, 1960, to Biddesden Cookery, 1987, with his daughter Mirabel Guinness. After war service with the Royal Artillery in north Africa, Pym concentrated on theatre design at the Globe and Aldwych Theatres, Covent Garden and in Paris. He also created peepshows in the style of model theatres. For the coronation of Queen Elizabeth, in 1953, Pym decorated the Queen’s Retiring Room at Westminster Abbey. Other murals were for hotels and restaurants; an altarpiece for St Mark, Biggin Hill, 1959; and The Saloon, Woburn Abbey, 1971-5, his biggest work. The Folio Society commissioned him to illustrate Nancy Mitford’s The Pursuit of Love, 1991, and Love in a Cold Climate, 1992, which he followed with Edith Sitwell’s English Eccentrics, 1994, and William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair, 1996. The Kentish Scene: pages from the Brasted Diary 1994-2004, 2004, edited by Edwin Taylor, incorporated part of Pym’s war diaries and featured other aspects of his output.
Text source: 'Artists in Britain Since 1945' by David Buckman (Art Dictionaries Ltd, part of Sansom & Company)
