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Andreas [Andrew] Duncan Carse (1876-1938) Of Norwegian and Scottish parentage, Duncan Carse was a wide-ranging artist and designer. As an illustrator, he is best known for his delightful and delicate fairy subjects. By the turn of the century, Duncan Carse was being described as ‘a successful designer’ (The Art Record, 1901). He associated with James Guthrie, Gunning King and other artists who were members of a guild of handicrafts at South Harting, Petersfield, Hampshire (now in West Sussex). Both he and Guthrie were members of the Bookplate Society, with Carse acting as its Honorary Treasurer and Guthrie as its Exhibition Secretary in 1903. Probably living in Blackheath by this time, he was also a member of the Blackheath Art Club, sending his first Royal Academy exhibit from there in 1904.
In 1907, the year of his marriage, Carse travelled to the United States.
There he produced some impressive decorations for John S Phipps’ Westbury House, which would become the most famous of Long Island estates. He worked equally well on a small scale, exhibiting watercolours and silk fan paintings, and illustrating books. In this period, he exhibited in London (Fine Art Society, 1910 and 1911), Chicago (Messrs Moulton & Ricketts, 1911 and 1912) and Venice (Venice Biennale, 1912). He also illustrated Hans Andersen’s Fairy Tales and Lucy Scott’s Dewdrops from Fairyland (both 1912).
By 1913, Carse and his wife, Florence, had moved to 35 Castletown Road, Fulham. In that year, she gave birth to a son, Werner (Verner) Duncan Carse, who would become a polar explorer and an actor – best remembered as the radio voice of Dick Barton, special agent.
In 1915, Carse returned to the United States, to decorate the Dining Room and Grill Room of the Detroit Athletic Club.
Carse moved out of London in 1922, living first in Knebworth, Hertfordshire (1922-23), and then at The Studio, Crowthorne, Berkshire (1925-38), where he died in October 1938. During this later period, he exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy and contributed two large decorative panels of birds to the First Class Dining Room of the Cunard passenger liner, RMS Queen Mary (1936).
His work is represented in the collections of the Museum of Reading.
