Colin William fforde Wyatt

Colin William fforde Wyatt
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Born	(1909-02-08)February 8, 1909 Marylebone, London, United Kingdom
Died	(1975 -11-18)November 18, 1975 Guatemala, Central America
Occupation	Skier Ski Jumper Artist Lepidopterist Writer Photographer Film-Maker Lecturer Traveller
Years active	1926–1975

Colin William fforde Wyatt, FRGS (8 February 1909 – 18 November 1975) was a man of many talents, a polymath. He was British champion ski-racer and ski-jumper and artist. He was a lepidopterist and outstanding field collector, with a large private collection, now in the Karslruhe Museum, Germany. Born in England, he emigrated first to Australia. During World War II, he was first put into military censorship owing to his knowledge of languages, then transferred to make propaganda broadcasts in French and German, and then joined the Royal Australian Air Force as a camouflage expert, with active service camouflaging emergency fighter-strips and radar stations being installed on the New South Wales coast. He then was posted to serve in the South West Pacific (New Guinea, Trobriand and Goodenough Islands), continuing in this role of camouflage expert. In 1944, he was seconded out of the RAAF at the request of the British Ministry of Information in London and asked to organise and run the first United Kingdom Information Office for Australasia in Sydney. At the end of the war, he was offered the post of as head of the British Council for Australasia but declined, owing to the breakdown of his marriage, and returned to England. He subsequently became a professional writer, photographer and film-maker of documentary topics, namely travel. He emigrated a second time, to western Canada, but after a few years returned again to England.

He had an unusual aptitude for languages and their regional dialects; fluent and colloquial French, Spanish, Norwegian, German and Swiss-German; moderate Danish and Swedish; adequate Italian and Farsi; sufficient Hindustani, Serbo-Croat, etc to get by during his extensive travels to those areas.

His wide-ranging interests included: lepidoptery, natural history; archaeology (and modern anthropology); art and sculpture, ballet, native or world music; botany, gardening, flower-arranging; mountain sports; cooking especially entertaining friends with world cuisine; traditional clothing; carpentry and cabinet-making; dancing; squash and tennis; chess and backgammon; playing the accordion, singing and yodelling alpine folk songs. He went out of his way to keep in touch with his many friends all over the world and, in his later years when living in England to ensure a secure base for his daughter, always welcomed what he fondly called "visiting firemen" (i.e. friends) to stay. He maintained a large acquaintance among butterfly collectors throughout the world and was constantly in touch with new discoveries in the world of lepidoptery.

Despite his many outstanding achievements, he has largely been overlooked and ignored. Decades after his death (1975), some specialists have, for example, picked up on his ski-mountaineering feats, or his rediscovery of a rare butterfly high in the Afghanistan mountains, but what is mostly resurrected and remembered is the 1947 court case of stealing butterflies from Australian museums.

Family, education and early life

Wyatt was born in Marylebone, London, the son of James William Wyatt, a civil engineer, mountaineer, lepidopterist and botanist, of Bryn Gwynant, Beddgelert, North Wales (of the Wyatt line of architects and land agents), and Margaret Ellen Nicol, an accomplished pianist, of Ardmarnock, Tighnabruaich, Argyllshire, Scotland. He was an only child. At the age of 10, he contracted double pneumonia and almost died but his mother took him to the Swiss Alps where he recovered, and forever afterwards always felt in best health at high altitudes. The illness interrupted his schooling and, although he was due to attend Harrow, he attended school in Switzerland and a crammers before going to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge to read modern languages. By this time he was already a noted skier and climber and captained the Cambridge Ski Club and Cambridge Ski Jumping Club. He had set his heart on becoming an artist, much to his father’s concern, and left before his final Cambridge exams to pursue his art studies.

He was always curious about the world and people, and at the outset of his adult life eschewed a conventional career path, took his chances, and began to travel the world, becoming an inveterate traveller of lesser-known parts of the world. The interests of his childhood remained with him throughout his life: climbing, ski-ing, butterflies, botany, art, travel, languages and meeting people.

Wyatt married in 1939 Mary Scott Barrett, of Kingswood, Surrey. They emigrated to Sydney, Australia, where he tried sheep farming while continuing as an artist. They divorced c.1946.

Wyatt married in 1952 Elsa Maria Herran, originally of Medellin, Colombia. They emigrated to Banff, Alberta, Canada and had one child, a daughter, Monica, in 1954. They separated c.1956.

Art work

He attended the County Council Central School of Art, London, the Grosvenor School of Art (with tutors Claude Flight and Iain McNab, and fellow students included William Kermode, Tom Chadwick, and Stanislaus Brien), the Slade School of Art, and the Academic Decluse, Paris. He also did a few works of sculpture.

Exhibitions and more

1928 Two paintings exhibited in the Paris Salon

1930 The Alpine Club (reference to his first exhibition, aged 21)

1931 Exhibited in St Moritz, Switzerland (pictures of the Tyrol, including houses and inns)

1931 Alpine murals for new indoor ski school at Lillywhite’s, Lower Regent Street, Piccadilly, London

1933 “Grubb Group” exhibition at Quo Vadis Restaurant (Yorkshire Post, 13 June 1933: "Two cautiously-named "abstracts" are the work of Colin Wyatt, described as the world's champion yodeller - he has broadcast in that capacity")

1933 Alpine murals for a new winter sports department at Jaeger House, Oxford Street

1934 Connell Galleries, 47 Old Bond Street, London (portraits, oil paintings and chromium ski-ing figures)

1935 The Studio magazine, article on sculpture includes photograph of his “Rhythmical Statuette”

1936 Grosvenor School of Modern Art at Storran Gallery (Artist, March 1936: "Amongst other works, Colin Wyatt's Spanish Landscape was noteworthy for its subtle design and the fine sympathy of its treatment.")

1941 Contemporary Art Society’s 3^rd annual exhibition, Sydney

One-man exhibitions

1932 Alpine Club Gallery (paintings and drawings)

1934 Alpine Club Gallery, Connell Galleries, 47 Old Bond Street (paintings and sculptures of the Pyrenees and Mittel Europa, also small chromium figures of three skiers)

1936 Grosvenor School of Modern Art at the Storran Gallery

1938 Palser Galleries, London

1941 September, Contemporary Art Society’s 3^rd annual exhibition, Sydney

1944 MacQuarie Galleries, Australia (where 50 per cent of his paintings were sold in 10 days).

1947 Walker's Galleries, Bond Street, London

1954 Coste House, Calgary, Canada (paintings from New Guinea)

Online exhibition

2018 Louise Kosman Art

Sir Rex Nan Kivell (The Redfern Gallery, London) had a Wyatt ski-ing linocut in his collection which he bequeathed to the Te Papa Museum in Wellington, New Zealand

The Australian War Memorial Museum has a portrait sketch of Colin Wyatt, playing the accordion, made at Milne Bay, Papua New Guinea in 1943 by the artist R. Emerson Curtis Robert Emerson Curtis (1898-1986) worked as a camouflage officer in Cairns and New Guinea.

Gordon Samuel, of Osborne Samuel, Bruton Street, London, specialist in the work of British modernist printmaking and the work of the Grosvenor School, has taken an interest in, and sold some of, Wyatt's ski-ing linocuts

Card publishing company, Art Angels, Norwich, featured two of Wyatt's ski-ing linocuts (The Race and Geländesprung) as Christmas cards

Films

· Nepal: Hidden Kingdom of the Himalayas. (1958) Dates of films

· Hindustan Holiday/India Holiday (1959)

· Afghanistan (1962)

· Iran: Land of the Peacock Throne (approximately 1966-67).

These were repeatedly syndicated on TV in the USA and he lectured with these travelogue films all over the USA. The films were also syndicated to circulate in Japan, West Germany and Australia.

Also films of: Engadine, Switzerland; Canadian Arctic

Lepidoptery

Highly respected entomologist and outstanding field collector, specialising in butterflies of the northern hemisphere (Alpine and Arctic especially), discovering new species and sub-species, and writing numerous scientific papers and articles for entomological magazines worldwide in various languages. In 1960, Wyatt rediscovered one of the rarest and most fabulous Asiatic mountain butterflies, Parnassius autocrator, on an expedition to Afghanistan and the Koh-i-Baba mountains and the Hindu-Kush. The results of his expeditions to this area and also to Kashmir, Nepal up to Mount Everest and Mount Annapurna, and also Sikkim, have been published in the journal of the Lepidopterists' Society, edited from Yale University. His field collecting was exceptional in that he travelled so far off the beaten track qand was also a ski mountaineer. For example, in 1950 he was crossing the m'Goun range of the High Atlas in Morocco as an alpinist, on skis. At 13,000ft he noticed a migration of Pieris daplidice (L.) passing over from the Sahara, from south to north, and other migratory species.

As well as describing a large number of species and sub-species new to science, he succeeded in throwing light on certain very complicated butterfly relationships. His particular interests included Apollo and Erebia. He had one of the largest private collections of butterflies, which, on his death was much sought after by, among others, the British Museum and the Smithsonian Institute; eventually it was acquired in its entirety by the State Museum of Natural History Karlsruhe, Germany. Wyatt took his net on every journey and, when in parts of the world in which he did not specialise, he knew enough to be able to collect for colleagues who were interested in that particular region.

In May 1947, in London (West Ham), he was found guilty and fined for stealing 1600 butterfly specimens from the Australian Museum, Sydney,[1] and the South Australia Museum, Adelaide. It is not clear why he did this. His legal defence referred to the break-up of his first marriage on his return from being in the RAAF in the Pacific during World War II, and, to quote The Sydney Morning Herald of 21 May, 1947, “not in full command of his faculties”. Both he and his wife Mary were distraught on the break-up but went their separate ways, each marrying again. The court case was well-covered in newspapers at the time. Wyatt co-operated fully with police and most of the stolen specimens were recovered.

Article: Kudrna, Otakar, An annotated list of the butterflies named by Colin W. Wyatt (Lepidoptera: Papilionoidea, Hesperioidea), Bonner Zoologische Beiträge, 1981

This article is by a fellow lepidopterist who knew Wyatt in in his last years and was welcomed to study Wyatt's collection in Farnham. Kudrna (1939-2021) sought to give recognition to Wyatt's skills and achievements as a lepidopterist, notwithstanding the court case of the theft of butterflies from Australian museums. The article includes some inaccuracies. These include the month of Wyatt's death, a misjudged comment about Wyatt having few friends (Wyatt had friends all over the world, as evidenced by his correspondence and the number of condolence letters sent to his daughter, but few in Farnham, a place where he felt he did not "fit" and where he maintained a home solely for the security of his daughter while she was at school); there is also an odd comment that possibly he was bisexual, an irrelevant comment for which there is no evidence.

Wyatt's academic papers included:

Einige neue Tagfalterformen aus Marokko (Zeitschrift der Wiener Entomologischen Gesellschaft, 37.Jg.1952)

Collecting on the Mackenzie and in the Western Arctic (The Lepidopterists' News, 1957)

An unusual aberration of Papilio Machaon Aliaska (The Lepidopterists' News, Vol.11: nos.1-3, 1957)

Observations on Boloria Distincta (Nymphalidae) (The Lepidopterists' News, Vol.11: nos.4-5, 1957)

Unvergessliche Erlebnisse (Zeitschrift der Wiener Entomologischen Gesellschaft, 42.Jg.1957)

Eine neue Rasse von Papilio machaon L. vom Mt. Everest-Gebiet (Zeitschrift der Wiener Entomologischen Gesellschaft, 44Jg.1959)

Eine neue Rasse von Parnassius simo Gray (Zeitschrift der Wiener Entomologischen Gesellschaft, 45.Jg.1960)

Additions to the Rhopalocera of Afghanistan with descriptions of new species and subspecies (Journal of The Lepidopterists' Society, Vol 15, No 1, 1961)

Zwei für das paläarktische Faunengebiet neue Tagfalterarten (Zeitschrift der Wiener Entomologischen Gesellschaft, 46.Jg.1961)

Eine neue Parnassius-Rasse aus Nordamerika (Zeitschrift der Wiener Entomologischen Gesellschaft, 46.Jg.1961)

Auf der Jagd nach Parnassius autocrator Avin (with Kei-ichi Omoto) (Zeitschrift der Wiener Entomologischen Gesellschaft, 48.Jg.1963)

Eine neue Rasse von Parnassius apollo L. aud Nordspanien ((Zeitschrift der Wiener Entomologischen Gesellschaft, 49.Jg.1964)

Further additions to the Rhopalocera of Afghanistan (Journal of The Lepidopterists' Society, Vol 18, No 2, 1964)

Auf der Suche nach dem "Traumfalter" with Kei-ichi Omoto) (Kosmos, Heft 10, Oktober 1964)

Zwei neue Formen von holarktischen Tagfaltern (Zeitschrift der Wiener Entomologischen Gesellschaft, 50.Jg.1965)

Einige neue Tagfalterrassen aus Spanien (Zeitschrift der Wiener Entomologischen Gesellschaft, 37.Jg.1965)

Eine neue Erebia-Art aus Alaska ((Zeitschrift der Wiener Entomologischen Gesellschaft, 51.Jg.1966)

New Lepidoptera from Afghanistan (with Kei-ichi Omoto) (Entomops, Nice, No 5, 24 Novembre 1966 and No.6, 24 Decembre 1966)

Huit jours en automne au Maroc (Alexanor, V. 1968)

Eine neue rasse von Brenthis hecate W.V. aus iran (Zeitschrift der Wiener Entomologischen Gesellschaft, 53.Jg.1968)

Eine neue Rasse von Parnassius phoebus L. aus Kanada (Zeitschrift der Wiener Entomologischen Gesellschaft, 54.Jg.1969)

Eine neue Rasse von Brenthis hecate W. V. aus Iran (Zeitschrift der Wiener Entomologischen Gesellschaft, 53.Jg.1968)

Description de deux nouvelles races d'Afghanistan de Parnassius (Lep. Papilionidae) (Entomops, Nice, No 36, 15 Avril 1975)

Wyatt 's collecting in Afghanistan features in:

Über Zygaena afghanica Reiss und Zygaena shivacola spec. n. (von Hugo Reiss, Stuttgart, and Dr Adolf Schulte, Hannover) (Entomologische Zeitschirft, Nr 6, 15 März, 1962)

Beitrag zur Zygaenenfauna Afghanistans (Lep.) (Hugo Reiss und Adolf Schulte) (Entomologische Zeitschrift, Nr 14, 15 Juli, 1964)

Zygaena wyatti spec.nov ((Hugo Reiss und Adolf Schulte) (Entomologische Zeitschrift, date unknown)

Wyatt 's collecting in Iran features in:

Zygaena (Agrumenia) christa n.sp. (Lep., Zygaenidae) (Hugo Reiss und Adolf Schulte) (Entomologische Zeitschrift, Nr 12, 15 Juni, 1967)

Extensive travels, including climbing and ski-mountaineering

His most notable achievements in ski-mountaineering were being the first to make the double winter ski traverse of the 12,000ft Main Divide of the New Zealand Southern Alps (1936-37); to cross Lapland on ski in the winter from Kebnekaise to North Cape, 350 miles (1938); and to make the first crossing of the Tiferdine - m’Goun ranges (13,000ft) in the Central High Atlas of Morocco to the Sahara (1950).

His Lapland achievement features in the film of Darren Hamlin (reference)

John Harding, in his 2016 book Distant Snows: A Mountaineer's Odyssey, refers to Wyatt as "a forgotten pioneer ski mountaineer" and writes that "Wyatt's exceptional ski mountaineering achievements have all but been forgotten." In an article in the Alpine Journal in 1988 titled Ski Mountaineering IS Mountaineering, Harding wrote of the 1930s as an era of animosity between traditional British climbers and those embracing "the new-fangled sport of ski-ing and, by extension, ski mountaineering". He describes Wyatt as "the outstanding British ski mountaineer of the immediate pre- and post-war years" and describes how Wyatt undertook ski mountaineering journeys to what were then wild parts of the world. He comments on how Wyatt's "achievements went largely unrecognised."

It needs to be remembered that these climbing and ski-mountaineering achievements were completed with the traditional equipment of the time, and countries reached by travel methods of the time: boat, train, bus.

Travels related to climbing and ski-mountaineering are listed. He travelled annually, with regular trips to Canada and the USA, to Europe, and later in life to Central and South American countries such as Mexico, Guatemala, Colombia and Peru. From 1972-1975 he made seven journeys to archaeological sites in Central and South America. In 1970-1971, he took his daughter out of school on a round-the-world trip, revisiting many of the places he had been to in North America, the Pacific, Australasia, Asia and Europe. He ski-ed annually in the Engadine, Switzerland.

1930-1936: Various summer and winter climbs in the Swiss and Austrian Alps, on foot, on ski, or both, including Finsteraarhorn traverse, Piz Paul traverse, Similaun traverse, etc; also Norway

1936-1937 New Zealand: Southern Alps: first ascent Mt. Wilycek, 10,001ft; first double winter ski traverse of Main Divide, via Tasman, Franz Josef, Fox and Haest glaciers and various climbs, rock and ice on higher peaks, first winter ascent of Mt. Annan, etc; invited by the New Zealand Ski Club for three months to visit all the ski-ing centres and advise on ski-ing development and competitions; North Island: winter traverse of all Ruapehu-Tongariro group of volcanoes, winter traverse of Mt. Egmont

1938 Albania: Traverse of N. Albanian Alps in Balkans

1938 Lapland: Complete winter crossing of Lapland on ski from Kebnekaise to North Cape, 350 miles

In 2022, Darren Hamlin, photographer and film-maker, featured Wyatt's achievement in 1938 of the first complete winter crossing of Lapland on ski from Kebnekaise to North Cape, 350 miles, and included some of Wyatt's photographs, in a film of a winter crossing of the Kebnekaise

1939 Canada: Various climbs in the Canadian Rockies

1940 Australia: Complete winter traverse of Main Range of Snowy Mts, with various explorations of their little-known western faces

1943 Papua New Guinea: Attempts on some higher mountains of over 9000ft

1944 Trobriand Islands, Papua New Guinea

1946 Australia: More exploration of W. faces of Snowy Mts.

1947 Norway

1947-1948: Switzerland: Winter traverse of Bernina Group; France: Zermatt to Chamonix on ski, including ascents of Monte Rosa, Mt Blanc, etc

1949 Morocco, North Africa; complete traverse of Toubkal Range, High Atlas, in winter (13,000ft) with several first winter ascents

1950 Morocco, North Africa; first crossing of Tiferdine and M’Goun (13,000ft) ranges, to Sahara, in almost unknown country, E. High Atlas (spent five months painting in Morocco)

1955 Seven months travelling the Northwest Territories, Canada

1956 Led an exhibition to Kashmir

1958 Travelled in Nepal, India, Himalayas

1960 Travelled in central Afghanistan

1961 Revisited High Atlas Morocco

1963 Travelled in the Afghan Hindu-Kush

1966 Travelled in Kara-Dagh and Elburs in Azerbaijan, north-western Iran

Published works

Books

1952 The Call of The Mountains, with 75 photogravure plates, and each chapter headed with the author's sketch maps and pen sketches; published by Thames and Hudson, London, also MacMillan, Canada, and 1953 New York.

A book on mountaineering, mostly on ski, across the world. Its nine chapters are: The Snows of Africa; Crossing the High Atlas; Across Lapland to the North Cape; "Sons of the Eagle": An Albanian Interlude; Riding through the Canadian Rockies; Ski-ing across Volcanoes in Maori-Land; From Ice to Jungle: the New Zealand Alps; The Alps: Mountains of History; The Snowy Mountains of Australia.

1955 Going Wild (subtitled: The Autobiography of a Bug-Hunter), with 30 black and white photographs; published by Hollis and Carter, London; also published in Colombo, Ceylon and Spain.

Subtitled The Autobiography of a Bug-hunter, its 17 chapters are: The Autobiography of a Bug-hunter; Lapland in Summer; The Alps and the Pyrenees; Forests and Sounds of New Zealand; Maoris and Geysers; The Australian Bush; Interlude in Ceylon; The Canadian Rockies; Australia: Butterflies and Ants; The New Guinea Jungle; The Trobriand Islands, S.W. Pacific; Papuan Mountaineering; Papuan Eden; North Queensland and the Barrier Reef; The Wilds of Morocco; Down to the Desert; Meet the Officer-in-Charge of Apes.

1958 North of Sixty, with 28 black and white photographs; published by Hodder and Stoughton, London.

In 1955, Wyatt spent seven months travelling the frozen north of the American continent, spanning the four seasons, coming in with the late winter and going out with the following early winter. The 14 chapters are: Gateway to the North; Mounties and Missionaries; Eskimo Land; Over the Barrens by Dog Team; The Stone Age still lives; Trappers of the White Fox; The Mackenzie Delta; Hunting the White Whale; Among the Copper Eskimos; Land of the Musk-Ox; The Atomic Age comes to the North; Land of Franklin and Amundsen; Back to Hudson's Bay; The Freeze-Up comes to Baffin Land.

Published a large number of articles in world’s major illustrated magazines, in several languages, and sold photographs to similar publications worldwide. For example, Country Life, Picture Post, Walkabout (Australia’s Geographic Magazine), Wild Birds magazine, Animal Pictorial, Countrygoer, Country Life, Le Patriote Illustré, De Spiegel, Pottery Gazette, The Vauxhall Motorist, Overseas Dispatch, Pictorial Education, The Boys’ Magazine, Vogue, The Queen, Panorama, Riding, The Listener, The Sphere, Wool Knowledge, Pinguin, The Sphere, The Motor, Maclean’s, and Kosmos.

Lecturer

Lectured on specialist travel trips (Lindblad, Serenissima, Swan Hellenic), to places including the Canadian Arctic, Greenland, The Bahamas and Central America.

Ski-ing

He excelled in downhill, jumping and cross-country and won numerous cups and medals during the 1920s and early 1930s. Races included International Inter Varsity Winter Sports Games, Oxford and Cambridge race, International Ski Championships of Europe.

• captained Cambridge University Ski Team twice (captain of the British team in the University World Winter Games)
• represented GB as a ski jumper on numerous occasions, especially in Norwegian Ski Championships

E.g. 1933, Ski-jumping, Norway, first English competitor to take part in the famous Holmenkollen contest. Took part in the first international slalom and downhill contest to be held in Norway, came 1^st in slalom, and 4^th in downhill.

• took part in 3 Federation Internationale de Ski championships and captained the British International Ski Team 3 times in the World Ski Championships.
• He broke the British ski-jumping record three times (1928, 1929, 1931) and achieved the most wins in the British Ski Jumping Championships (discontinued in 1936) in 1931, 1934 and 1936. Wyatt set the official British record of 57m (187ft) in 1931. This achievement remained in the Guinness Book of Records for decades.

E.g. 1929 Boxing Day St Moritz, Morven Cup, 3 jumps of 44m, 47m and 48m in a snowstorm, “thus breaking twice the British ski-jumping record” “which he himself had put up last year on the Bernina Schanze at Pontresina”. This was two years after Alex Keiller founded the British Ski-Jumping Club. He again was British ski-jumping champion in 1931, at Wengen.

• 1936 was invited, as council delegate of Ski Club of Great Britain, by the New Zealand government to spend six months on a lecture tour to discuss development of winter resorts (and then went on to do a vaudeville tour, yodelling and playing the squeezebox (accordion), in Australia).

He continued to ski throughout his life, visiting the Engadine, Switzerland annually, and sometimes raced in the veteran class.

Friends

Over his lifetime, Wyatt made friends all over the world, across all sections of society. After his first marriage broke up, at the end of World War II, he became a Buddhist and a great friend was the noted judge Christmas Humphreys, who founded the London Buddhist Lodge, which later changed its name to the Buddhist Society. In November 1956, Wyatt, with the British Buddhist Society’s delegation, attended the World Fellowship of Buddhists’ conference, Kathmandu, and was the official delegate from the UK to the Buddha Jayanti Congress in Nepal, under leadership of Christmas Humphreys QC. He also always said that he had spent about six months in a Buddhist monastery.

Clubs

Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society; member of the Alpine Ski Club and Swiss Alpine Club, Ski Club of Great Britain, Grosvenor International Sports Club; honorary member of the Swiss Universities Ski Club and Ruapehu Ski Club New Zealand; member of Le Touring Club de France and The Buddhist Society.

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