Roland Pym
Roland Vivian Pym (12 June 1910 – 12 January 2006) was a British painter, illustrator and theatre designer. He was known for elegant romantic images of fashionable London society and country life, and some people compared him to Rex Whistler.
He was born in Cheveley, near Newmarket, and the family later moved to Brasted in Kent. He went to Ludgrove and Eton, then studied at the Slade School of Art, specializing in theatre design. One of his fellow students was Osbert Lancaster.
Before World War II he worked as a mural painter. He received a commission for Bryan Guinness at Biddesden, starting a long friendship and many murals and illustrations for the Guinness family. These appeared in Guinness children’s books such as The Story of Johnny and Jemima (1936), The Children in the Desert (1947) and The Story of Catriona and the Grasshopper (1958).
After serving in the Royal Artillery during the war, Pym became a sought-after theatre designer. He was hired by Binkie Beaumont to create sets and costumes for ballets and plays. He also designed sets for Lohengrin at Covent Garden and Eugene Onegin in Paris. For Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation in 1953, he decorated the Queen’s Retiring Room at Westminster Abbey.
In later years he continued with mural work. His biggest commission was The Saloon at Woburn Abbey (1971–75) for the Duke of Bedford. In the 1990s he returned as an illustrator for The Folio Society, working on Nancy Mitford’s The Pursuit of Love (1991) and Love in a Cold Climate (1992), followed by editions of Edith Sitwell’s English Eccentrics (1994) and Thackeray’s Vanity Fair (1996).
Pym remained a lifelong bachelor and died in Edenbridge, Kent, in 2006.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 08:35 (CET).