Walter Wyles: "...something out of the ordinary"

Guest author: Bryn Havord

George (Tiny) Watts the art director of Woman was keen to encourage Wally to push the boundaries and work in different styles for different assignments. This Elizabethan woman with her hands held in prayer was part of an eight or ten part period serial done for Woman around 1961.


Wally did these science fiction and fantasy covers in the mid 1970s.


He did about four in total and enjoyed doing them.


Throughout his career, clients could usually rely on Wally to do something out of the ordinary...


... sometimes we got more than we expected!



During his career he had been privileged to paint HM Queen Elizabeth II and HRH The Duke of Edinburgh, and other prominent members of the Royal Family...



... and he started to accept a growing number of portrait commissions.



He was also working as an easel painter producing landscapes in oil and watercolour.


However, a series of heart attacks resulted in an enforced period of convalescence and he drastically reduced his work commitments.

In 2004, his wife Margaret wrote a book using some of her late mother’s letters, featuring her early life as a young girl in a remote village in west Wales. Wyles was commissioned to produce the illustration for the cover. When it was published the Welsh Book Council made it their Book of the Month. (Love from Blodwen. By Margaret Wyles. Seren. ISBN 1-85411-359-3).


Wyles who is now eighty-four, continues to paint every day, and still accepts the occasional portrait commission.

* Many thanks to guest author Bryn Havord for this week's excellent presentation on Walter Wyles! In the late 50s and early 60s Bryn was assistant art director of Woman magazine. From 1963 to 1965 he was associate editor and art director of Woman's Mirror; both of which were published in the UK. During that time he commissioned work from all the leading British Illustrators including Walter Wyles, Eric Ernshaw, Michael Johnson and Gerry Fancett. Walter Wyles remains his oldest and closest friend.

* Personal photographs © Peter Mullett.

* My Walter Wyles Flickr set.