A portraitist, stage designer and writer. He studied in Munich, Paris and Vienna, and visited Russia, China and Japan in 1936.

He began to paint after 1938, and held his first one-man show at the Nicholson Gallery in 1943. He contributed to Penguin New Writing, organised the Degas exhibition for the Edinburgh Festival in 1952 and has written books on Islamic art and Architecture. He designed for the ballet and the opera, and was Director of Art, The British School at Rome, 1953-5 and 1957-9.

His work is in the Tate and other national collections; typical of his fresh spontaneous painting, is Cliff Face, Tory Island.