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Colin William fforde Wyatt, FRGS (8 February 1909 – 19 November 1975) was a 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 served in the Royal Australian Air Force as a camouflage expert, with active service in the South West Pacific (New Guinea and islands). 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 family complications, 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 a natural aptitude for languages and their regional dialects; fluent and colloquial French, Spanish, Norwegian, German and Swiss-German; adequate Italian, Swedish, Danish 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, gardens, flower-arranging; mountain sports; cooking especially entertaining friends with world cuisine; carpentry and cabinet-making; dancing; squash and tennis; chess and backgammon. 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, always welcomed them to stay.

Family

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, 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.

Wyatt married 1939 Mary Scott Barrett, of Kingswood, Surrey. They emigrated to Sydney, Australia, where he tried sheep farming alongside art. They divorced c.1946.

Wyatt married 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 around 1956.

Early life

He was 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.

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

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 or 1932               Storran Gallery with other students of the Grosvenor School of Modern Art; reference to a painting exhibited with others of the "Grubb Group"; reference to an exhibition at the Paris Salon

1931                            Murals for new indoor ski school at Lillywhite’s, Piccadilly, London

1933                            “Grubb Group” exhibition at Quo Vadis Restaurant

1934                            Connell Galleries, 47 Old Bond Street

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

1936                            Grosvenor School of Modern Art at Storran Gallery

1941                            Contemporary Art Society’s 3 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 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

Films

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

·        Hindustan Holiday/India Holiday (1959)

·        Afghanistan.

·        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.  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, and 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; it eventually was acquired in its entirety by the Museum of Karlsruhe, Germany.

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; to cross Lapland on ski in the winter from Kebnekaise to North Cape, 350 miles; and to make the first crossing of the Tiferdine - m’Goun ranges (13,000ft) in the Central High Atlas of Morocco to the Sahara.

John Harding, in his 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."

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 (see Alpine Journal); 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

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

1944 Trobriand Islands

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)

1956 Led an exhibition to Kashmir

1958 Travelled in Nepal, Himalayas

1960 Travelled in Nepal central Afghanistan

1963 Travelled in Nepal 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, pub MacMillan, Canada, London and 1953 New York.

1955    Going Wild (subtitled: The Autobiography of a Bug-Hunter), pub Hollis and Carter; also published in Ceylon and Spain.

1958    North of Sixty, pub Hodder and Stoughton.

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).

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 in slalom, and 4 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.
• 3 times ski-jumping champion of GB (1928, 1929, 1931) and held the GB jumping record (was in Guinness Book of Records* for years).

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 2 years after Alex Keiller founded the British Ski-Jumping Club. CWW captain of the Cambridge University Ski 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!).

* 4 edition, 1960: Ski-ing: Most British titles: The most wins in the British Ski-jumping Championships (discontinued in 1936) is Colin Wyatt (1931, 1934, 1936). Wyatt set the official British record of 57m (187ft) in 1931.

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 Alpine Club, 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.

External links and references

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

Article: JGR Harding, Ski mountaineering IS mountaineering, The Alpine Journal, 1998

Riddell: (to be added)

Book: The Wyatts, An Architectural Dynasty; John Martin Robinson, Oxford University Press 1979

1. "Butterflies, Moths, Collection, History". www.smnk.de. Retrieved 2023-05-12.
2. "James William Wyatt - Graces Guide". www.gracesguide.co.uk. Retrieved 2023-05-12.
3. "Donald Nicol (MP)", Misplaced Pages, 2023-02-07, retrieved 2023-05-12
4. "Sports". www.art-angels.co.uk. Retrieved 2023-05-12.
5. Kosman (2018). "Colin fforde Wyatt 1909-1975".
6. Harding, John G R (2016). Distant Snows A Mountaineer's Odyssey. Baton Wicks Publications. ISBN 9781898573784.
7. Kudrna, Otakar (1981). "An annotated list of the butterflies named by Colin W. Wyatt (Lepidoptera: Papilionoidea, Hesperioidea)". Bonner Zoologische Beiträge. 32: 221–236 – via Zoologisches Forschungsinstitut und Museum Alexander Koenig, Bonn.
8. Harding, JGR (1998). "Ski Mountaineering IS Mountaineering". The Alpine Journal: 140–145.