Brian Stonehouse

Self-portrait drawn in concentration camp.

Brian Stonehouse (1918-1998) was an English painter who served as a Special Operations Executive agent during World War II.

Personal life

Brian Julian Warry Stonehouse was born on August 29, 1918 in Torquay, England. He attended school in Wimereux, Pas-de-Calais when his family spent a few years in France. After returning to Britain in 1932 he studied at the Ipswich School of Art.

World War II experiences

At the outbreak of World War II, Stonehouse volunteered in the Territorial Army, and then was conscripted into the Royal Artillery. Proficiency in the French language enabled him to work as an interpreter and led to his recruitment into the Special Operations Executive. He trained as a radio operator and was assigned the code name of Celestin. In 1942 he was parachuted into France, and worked as an SOE agent until the Germans detected his radio signal and captured him.

Stonehouse was brutally interrogated by the Gestapo, and moved to a series of concentration camps. He was released from Dachau in 1945. His artistic training helped him to survive, as he drew sketches for his German captors. After the war he testified at war crimes trials, providing a watercolor of four women SOE agents who had been killed. He was honored with an MBE. More details about his wartime experiences are available in Wikipedia.

Artistic career

For many years, Stonehouse worked in New York as a fashion illustrator for magazines like Vogue and Harper's Bazaar, and for fashion houses like Elizabeth Arden. In the early 1960s, the fashion industry began to phase out illustrators in favor of fashion photographers.

He returned to England to paint more seriously portraits, landscapes, still lifes. He had a flat in London and a small place in Suffolk and became well-known to a discriminating field. His portrait of the Queen Mother dominates the bar of the Special Forces Club of which he was a pillar; and he had just finished a second portrait of her which was unveiled last month at the King Edward VII Hospital as a thank- offering for their care of her hip. On Remembrance Sunday, it was he who laid the Special Forces Club wreath at the SOE memorial in Westminster Abbey Cloisters.

Theosophical Society connection

Stoneohouse was a member of the United Lodge of Theosophists, and in his final years lived at their branch in London. He died in London on December 2, 1998.

Additional resources

Articles

• "Brian Stonehouse" in Wikipedia.
• Obituary: Brian Stonehouse by M. R. D. Foot in The Independent. Posted January 19, 1999.
• Brady, Anna. "From Dachau to the New York Catwalk". Antiques Trade Gazette November 15, 2014.
• The World's Most Stylish Spy] by in The Lady. Accessed January 3, 2026.

Books

• Sharf, Frederic A. and Michelle Finamore. Brian Stonehouse, MBE, 1918-1998: Artist, Soldier, War Hero, Fashion Illustrator. Middlebury, Conn.: Velocity Print Solutions, 2014. Book issued to accompany an art exhibit of Stonehouse's works in 2014.