When she spotted this website, trawling for links for Jim Holland and Jim Boswell, Sal Shuel got in touch and offered to write a contribution [below]. I found this photo of Sal among my father's things when we were clearing his studio a few years ago. As with many things in the studio, time had taken its toll a bit!
James Holland was my godfather; a really nice godfather who didn't bother with my catechism and treated me like a Real Person. There were three Jims - James Fitton, James Boswell and James Holland. James Boswell was my father. They were all good friends but the Hollands and the Boswells were close. When he married Jackie I went to the reception. I always thought her one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen – beautiful when young and still beautiful as she aged. She had eyes which crinkled up when she laughed which she did a lot! I babysat for young James occasionally. When I married, Jim Holland supplied his own car – an aged, white Rolls Royce and when my first son was born, Jackie was his godmother.
The three Jims met in the late twenties as students and produced astonishing work, particularly to anyone interested in the politics of the Thirties. They worked together in the lithography evening classes which Jim Fitton taught at the Central School of Art and the three of them produced a constant flow of brilliant satirical cartoons. Occasionally it's not easy to decipher who did what. They tended to live in each other’s pockets and they didn't have much money. Eventually they all married and settled down in order to support families and the lifestyle they fancied.
The working lives of Jim Holland and Jim Boswell in particular followed a similar pattern. They both belonged to the same groups, clubs, and organisations. They supplied illustrations for the same publications. The war took them off in different directions but they remained friends. Jim Fitton became a respectable RA. Jim Holland worked miracles with the Festival ship Campania in 1951 at a time when resources were limited and then helped to put the Society of Industrial Artists onto an economic and professional footing. He and Jim Fitton both worked in advertising. Later he took to teaching like a duck to water. Jim Boswell worked for Lilliput for five glorious years, was heaved out along with a lot of the staff for enjoying himself too much and being subversive, painted a mural in the Sea and Ships Pavilion at the Festival of Britain then bit the bullet and edited a house magazine for Sainsbury's - which gave him the freedom to take up painting again.
Jim Holland had a great love of anything connected with the sea and his paintings of harbours and working shipping are second to none. We have a lino cut of Polperro which was his Christmas card sometime in the distant past. It's framed on our crowded wall and we won't shift it.
I loved Jim Holland. He was kind and understanding and fun and cared deeply for all the things in which he found himself involved. When my parents parted company in the mid sixties, he was desperately torn between the two of them but he was one of the few people who understood that I was as torn as he was. A nice man. A really nice man.
Sal and Jim Boswell and the infamous Rolls, photo courtesy of Sal Shuel.