Edward Paterson
Edward "Ned" Paterson was a pioneering art teacher in Rhodesia. He is known for founding Cyrene School near Bulawayo, and for introducing the Arts and Crafts style to Africans in both South Africa and Rhodesia. Some of his students were among the first professional African artists in Rhodesia.
Early life and education
Paterson was born in Aberdeen, Scotland, and emigrated to the South African Republic with his family in 1901. He left school young and went to work at fourteen, serving part-time in the Transvaal Scottish Regiment. During World War I his regiment was called up, and Paterson served in the Namibian and East African campaigns before being demobilized in 1918. After the war he was awarded a veteran's scholarship, and went to study at the Central [School of Arts and Crafts] in London. Although he possessed a tremendous love of art, Paterson was not sufficiently talented to pursue an art career on his own. He returned to South Africa, joined the Transvaal diocese of the Anglican church in 1924, and completed his religious training in 1928 when he was ordained as a deacon.Year at Grace Dieu 1925
Paterson's artistic influence first made itself felt at Grace Dieu, an Anglican high school for Africans near Pietersburg, where he was posted for the 1925 school year. The school had an unusual syllabus that included carpentry and drawing. Paterson introduced the school's workshop students to bas relief carving, which he had learned in art school. This form of carving soon became the school's trademark style, and was continued by a nun called Sister Pauline after Paterson's departure. Before long, the school developed what would become Africa's first art workshop, with students and attached professional carvers producing religious carvings on commission for churches needing furniture and ecclesiastical objects. Ernest Mancoba and Job Kekana, two of South Africa's first professional black artists, emerged from this workshop. The African carvers at the workshop were not given the latitude to create their own designs at the workshop, but were instead given designs and asked to transfer them onto the wood. Paterson supplied many of the designs used at the workshop through the late 1930s as a means of augmenting his small income.Work in the Transvaal, 1928-1938
After being ordained, Paterson served a number of African congregations for the Transvaal diocese for a decade in locations such as Sophiatown and Potchefstroom. During this time he helped decorate a number of new Anglican churches in his diocese, including many murals and carvings. All this work was erased in the 1950s when the Nationalist government relocated urban Africans to townships and destroyed their old neighborhoods. In 1933 Paterson was married to Mary Phillips, with whom he would have four children.Cyrene Mission, 1939-53
The centerpiece of Paterson's career were his years in charge of Cyrene School, near Bulawayo in Rhodesia, where he moved to in 1939. This school, which Paterson started from scratch, focused on practical and agricultural education. It was the first African school in Rhodesia to have art classes, which were made mandatory for all students. "Our aim is to turn out the self-contained burger type, able to farm rationally and to care for his cattle, able to build his own home and to make its furniture and even to enrich them by carving and design." All students took painting and drawing classes with Paterson until he left the school in 1953. He also established an arts workshop that met in the afternoons, which typically included disabled students unable to take part in sports or construction. These students also learned to carve, sculpt and produce linocut prints.Cyrene became well known as Paterson sought to exhibit his artists and sell their work in order to recoup the heavy costs of providing art education. By 1944 his artists were selling strongly among White Rhodesians. In 1947 the repute of Cyrene was sufficient to attract a visit from the King George VI's 1947 tour of southern Africa. In the wake of the ensuing publicity from the royal visit, traveling exhibitions of Cyrene student art toured South Africa, England, and the United States regularly from 1949-1953, raising enough money for Paterson to cover his annual budget deficits. These exhibitions made Paterson the best-known art educator in Africa of his era. Eventually a number of Rhodesia's first professional African artists emerged from Cyrene. These included Sam Songo, Lazarus Khumalo, and Kingsley Sambo.