David Shepherd

Presenter0:00

This download is the only extract the BBC has of this edition of Desert Island Discs. The presenter was Roy Plumley.

David Shepherd0:08

David, what part of the country do you come from?

David Shepherd0:10

I'm a Londoner. I was born in Hendon in North London, Earth.

Presenter0:13

Was to become a painter a very early ambition?

David Shepherd0:16

Half-hearted, yes. Um I was at Stowe School and there was a marvellous art um department at Stowe and it I had a tremendous interest in painting, but it was certainly not a serious one to the extent of wanting to make a career out of it, because there's never been any art in my family at all.

David Shepherd0:30

And uh I just uh thought that I would starve,'cause all artists are supposed to starve, which is a lot of nonsense across but

David Shepherd0:38

So what did you want to do?

David Shepherd0:39

Be a gay modern in Africa.

Presenter0:41

What gave you that?

David Shepherd0:42

But

Presenter0:42

I do.

David Shepherd0:42

Well, I can't I it's extraordinary really. I I when I was a kid, I suppose I at about eight I I used to read all these books by these so-called pioneers. Um they're in inverted commas pioneers because when you re-read these great classics on the early days of exploration and big game hunting in Africa, one re-reads them now and um I come to the conclusion anyway that they're just one long tale of slaughter from one cover to the other. You know, th this morning I had a bad morning, I only slaughtered eighteen elephants, you know, and this sort of thing. They all really are like that, but in those days I didn't see it as that. And these books fired me with this extraordinary obsession to be a gay modern in East Africa. What did you do about that obsession? Uh well, when I left Stowe at the age of nineteen, um

David Shepherd1:23

I went straight out to Keno with this extraordinarily arrogant idea that I was God's gift to the National Parks of Keno, and all I would have to do was to knock on their door and say, Here I am and they would say, Welcome, be a game warden and they didn't. They said, We don't want you and that was the end of my career.

David Shepherd1:37

In about ten seconds. So well, I came back home thoroughly disillusioned, um, and then I had the choice of either being an artist and starving, for reasons I've already mentioned, you know, I thought I'd starve if I was going to be an artist, or if I wanted to live uh and eat.

David Shepherd1:53

One would have to be a a bus driver because it was the only other thing I think I could have

Presenter1:57

Yeah.

David Shepherd1:57

And um I decided on the uh so I thought the lesser of two evils. I would start as an artist. Where did you study?

David Shepherd2:04

Well, I I having made that great decision, I decided I would have to have some training. My father said, Well, you'd better go to the Slade. Uh the Slade School of Fine Art was the only art school we'd ever heard of in my family.

David Shepherd2:14

and I entered for their entrance examination and they failed me on the spot. They said, You're not worth teaching.

David Shepherd2:21

So my life was one long tale of disaster from one end to the other. What happened next?

David Shepherd2:27

Just by one of these funny twists of fate I went to a cocktail party in London and uh just by chance I met a professional artist who I'd never heard of, a chap called Robin Goodwin.

David Shepherd2:37

And I was pouring out all my tale of abject misery to him and um he said, Well, let's see those things that the slade rejected and he took me on, for some incredible reason I'll never understand. And he taught you? Yeah.

Presenter2:48

Mm-hmm.

David Shepherd2:49

And when you were on your own, what happened?

David Shepherd2:51

Well, I had two and a half years with him, and he then said, Right, you're on your own and again I was terribly lucky. Luck plays such a vast part in my life, it really does, because my father, bless him, said, Well, you don't have to go into the world straight away and live on your painting.

David Shepherd3:05

For your bread and butter, you can spend the first 12 months as a professional painter still living at home.

David Shepherd3:10

Uh you know, so that you don't have to worry about the money. And I spent the whole of that year at London Airport of all strange places. I was an aviation painter to start with, specializing in stratocruisers and comic ones and all those funny old things. This was really what you wanted to do.

Presenter3:20

This was very new.

David Shepherd3:22

Well, uh specializing in aircraft painting, yes, it seemed to be the first natural thing I specialized in. Um this goes back to the war actually, when uh you know during the Battle of Britain I was a highly impressionable eight-year-old schoolboy and uh I didn't appreciate the horror of war, this was just fiendishly exciting war. God, I mean going to school in the car, you know, and jumping out and watching the dog fights overhead.

Presenter3:27

Um

David Shepherd3:43

And this is what gives me my passionate interest now in World War II. Yes, you're still excited about aircraft. Oh, tremendously. Did this bring results?

Presenter3:49

Oh man.

Presenter3:50

Yeah.

David Shepherd3:51

Yes, well I uh initially I started painting civil aviation for people like de Havillands and Vickers and then the RAF picked me up and in about 1960, this was the greatest break of all the Royal Air Force in Arabia, in Aden actually, invited me out to paint for them.

David Shepherd4:07

And when I arrived in Aden I painted Arabian subjects, but much more significantly I was invited down onto Kenya, where the RAF were in the old colonial days. And the Royal Air Force in Kenya said we'd like two pictures for our mess in Nairobi. But we don't want aeroplanes all day. Do you paint jumbos? The elephant kind that is, of course. And I said, God, no, I've never painted an elephant in my life, but I'll have a bash. Being interested, of course, in being a frustrated game model. And little did I know what it was going to start.

Presenter4:34

But

Presenter4:36

Well, then you found you were rather good at painting elements.

Presenter4:39

Now the RAF commissioned your first elephant pictures, and then you went on to paint some more. In fact, a David Shepherd elephant picture, Wise Old Elephant, topped the sales lists of reproductions, and there were more copies of that sold than there were of that picture of a Chinese girl with a green face, which one has seen everywhere.

David Shepherd4:56

Oh dear, oh dear. Yes, I know. There was a lovely cutting in a newspaper some time ago saying, um, out goes that ghastly Chinese girl and now so help me you're buying elephants.

David Shepherd5:06

I don't know why journalists have to write like that, but uh

David Shepherd5:09

No, being serious, the uh mass produced prints, you know, at an earlier stage in my life, did a tremendous lot for me and uh

Presenter5:10

Yeah.

David Shepherd5:16

A number of people rather think I'm arrogant in condemning them. If I do, it is simply that one progresses. And in the early days, they did a lot for me in the sense that they made my name, perhaps to some degree. But you're not going to do it again. Well, the thing is that you have to reach a stage when you have to think of yourself to some degree. And when you have a one-man show and people are prepared to fly over from America, which they have done for my recent show, and put their name in a hat, and then not draw out a picture. You know, you have more.

Presenter5:41

You know, you have

David Shepherd5:42

People wanting pictures and there are pictures available.

Presenter5:43

Playable? Yes.

David Shepherd5:44

When you have that sort of incredible flattery, which really is fantastic, you can't damage it in any sense by being known as oh, goddies that chap who hangs in the chain stores. This is a shame, but there we are.

Presenter5:54

This is a shame.

Presenter5:55

But you're jumping ahead. That first reproduction success did lead to your first London exhibition. Indeed, yes.

David Shepherd6:02

Yes, I had my f First show in nineteen sixty two, one man show.

Presenter6:04

Yeah.

Presenter6:05

Now, you don't paint elephants very much any more, but you still go to Africa twice a year to paint wildlife.

David Shepherd6:11

Yes, I do. Actually, I do still paint elephants, but just as much, if not more. But uh I'm trying just perhaps you were right in the sense that I'm trying to get away from this idea that I paint nothing but elephants. Uh yes, I go to Africa, you have to keep going to refresh or, you know, recharge your batteries, as it were.

Presenter6:27

Now animals don't keep still. Do you work from quick sketches or from photographs or or what?

David Shepherd6:32

Combination of both. I rely to some extent on photography, but I must make the point that I take the photographs myself. You have to go to Africa yourself and see what you're photographing. And your camera is rarely a means of mechanically recording what you see for convenience. But the whole atmosphere you can only get if you go there yourself. I have indeed sat up in front of an elephant, or in fact the BBC did this documentary recently about my life, and we got to within 40 feet of two bull elephants with my easel. Absolutely mad. I mean the elephants I'm sure went home and told their chums that they they've never had an experience like it setting up an easel in front of an elephant but uh we got away with it and it was enormous fun. Bit mad but

Presenter7:13

You paint animals, elephants and so on. Um you want to ensure there's a supply left to paint. Oh, gotcha. So you are a great enthusiast.

David Shepherd7:22

And campaigner for conservation. Conservation, yes. Well, you you know you I've been going to Africa for twenty years.

David Shepherd7:29

And you can't help getting wrapped up in this ghastly mess that it all is. A ghastly mess in the sense that the animals are being poached out of existence. I'm not talking about professional shooting and professional hunters, this is a different thing altogether. Or even culling for the sake of keeping the numbers down. But the people, Europeans, black and white, who go out and snare giraffe, you know, a typical example is a giraffe that takes perhaps a week to die in the heat. In a wire snare, it struggles and the wire goes right down to its bone, the neck bone.

Presenter7:42

Or you

David Shepherd7:59

And then it dies in the heap with its eyes falling out, and the poacher will come along and cut the tail hairs off, to make a bangle for the tourists to buy in Nairobi, and the rest of the animal is wasted.

David Shepherd8:08

And and worse things than that, which I won't describe. And when you see this and you get so wrapped up in it, you obviously want to do something about it.

Presenter8:14

You gave some paintings to be auctioned in the United States to to buy a helicopter.

David Shepherd8:17

Copped her to catch some of the game

David Shepherd8:19

Yes, well, this is of course the greatest thrill of my life, and I mean this because the way I put this, one doesn't want to paint for one's government all the time. It's much more satisfying to paint for conservation. I paint the pictures anyway, and rather than sell them all and give the money to the inland revenue, I think it's much more satisfying to try and do something about this conservation mess. And

Presenter8:38

Uh

David Shepherd8:39

I boast about it if you like, but I've raised managed to raise about eighty thousand pounds altogether now, and I only boast about it because it gives me such a tremendous kick. I I haven't given away anything. The pictures were going to be painted anyway. And the helicopter was the ultimate. We raised forty six thousand pounds in one evening in America last year. We being a lot of artists, not just me by any means.

Presenter8:46

I I

David Shepherd8:56

And this helicopter is now working. I handed it over to the President a few weeks ago in Zambia. And it's catching poachers at this moment, I hope. It's so exciting.

Presenter9:05

What's your partner working?

David Shepherd9:06

You work towards assembling enough pictures for an exhibition.

David Shepherd9:10

Yes, the pattern seems to be now that I work from one one man show to the next. Uh the pattern is Johannesburg, London, New York, San Francisco, and that sort of thing, um, every eighteen months. So I mean I'm the luckiest man alive. I'm more or less

Presenter9:19

Yeah.

David Shepherd9:22

you know, employed for the rest as far as I can see, which is fantastic. It is incredible.

Presenter9:27

He will also paint portraits. Uh

David Shepherd9:28

Yeah.

Presenter9:28

Okay, so

David Shepherd9:29

Yeah.

Presenter9:29

Uh

David Shepherd9:29

Yes, I've painted five portraits altogether, all fairly select people. Who, for example? Well, starting with Christ, I did this uh painting of Christ, life size painting of Christ for the army.

David Shepherd9:40

It hangs in the uh Borden

David Shepherd9:43

Garrison Church, Borden in Hampshire.

Presenter9:44

Lam

David Shepherd9:45

This really was the most uh if I, you know, paint twenty thousand pictures, that will still be the most memorable thing I've ever painted. I really feel that sincerely. What other portraits have you done?

David Shepherd9:54

President Carwinder of Zambia, my great friend Dr. Carwinder, who's we really are tremendous chums. I painted him in the middle of a national park with hippos making vulgar noises about 20 feet. Completely mad, but I did it. And my Stowe School headmaster, and the Sheikh of one of the oil-rich Trucial States, Sheikh Zaid of Abu Dhabi. And my wife. But I don't. Oh, and the Queen Mother, bless her heart. Oh, I nearly forgot the Queen Mother. Oh, goodness, how can one? That was one of the most enjoyable pictures I've ever done. I was commissioned to paint her by the army.