John Banting

[6] Banting first gained wider notice in the 1920s through his work on book jackets with Leonard and Virginia Woolf's Hogarth Press,[7] and also as the designer of the ballet set for Constant Lambert's Pomona (1926) at the Cambridge Theatre.

[5] He contributed to the London International Surrealist Exhibition in 1936[10] and worked on various projects, commercial and artistic, ranging from an advertisement for Shell Oil[11] to sets and costumes for the Camargo Society ballet Prometheus (1936) at Sadler's Wells.

[12] In 1938 he was invited to contribute to the Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme in Paris by Marcel Duchamp, and this led to a solo surrealist exhibition at the Storran Gallery in October 1938.

Also with Cunard he visited Spain in October 1937 during the Civil War, attempting to join the (then disbanding) International Brigade in Madrid and meeting Ernest Hemmingway.

[5][16] After the war Banting found himself struggling to make a living, but was helped by a grant from the Artists Benevolent Fund, organised by his friend Julian Trevelyan who dubbed him "the eternal outsider".