first as a glazer before undertaking embroidery and wallpaper work. At the age of seventeen, one of Brangwyn's paintings was accepted and then sold to a shipowner, at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, which strengthened him in his conviction to become an artist. Brangwyn joined the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve and began painting seascapes. He convinced the shipowner who had bought his Royal Academy picture to let him sail on a freighter to Istanbul. This trip provided Brangwyn with the material for several notable paintings. Whereas Funeral at Sea, which won a medal at the Paris Salon in 1891 was mostly composed in grey, The Golden Horn, Constantinople was much brighter and full of colour. Although Brangwyn held his first one-man show in London in 1891, he spent most of that year and 1890 at sea, visiting Spain several times as well as returning to Istanbul and travelling to South Africa and Zanzibar. In 1892 he visited northern Spain with the Scottish artist Arthur Melville, travelling from Saragossa along the Canal Imperial de Aragon on the barge, the Santa Maria. Soon Brangwyn was attracted by the light and the bright colours of these southern countries at a time when Orientalism was becoming a favoured theme for many painters. He made many paintings and drawings, particularly of Spain, Egypt, Turkey and Morocco, which he visited in 1893. This lightened his palette, a change that initially did not find critical favour but helped establish his international reputation. In 1895 the French government purchased his painting Market in Morocco. In 1895, the Parisian art dealer Siegfried Bing commissioned Brangwyn to decorate the exterior of his Galerie L'Art Nouveau, and encouraged Brangwyn into new avenues: murals, tapestry, carpet designs, posters and designs for stained glass to be produced by Louis Comfort Tiffany. In 1896 he illustrated a six-volume reprint of Edward William Lane's translation of One Thousand and One Nights. In 1917 he collaborated with the Japanese artist Urushibara Mokuchu on a series of woodblock prints. For his austere but decorative designs he was recognized by continental and American critics as a prominent artist, while British critics were puzzled as to how to evaluate him. Through his collecting Japanese works, he became friends with Kojiro Matsutaka the Japanese industrial magnate, who became his patron. Brangwyn had an affair with Ellen Kate Chesterfield, which produced a son, James Barron Chesterfield-Brangwyn, born 1885 in Mevagissey, Cornwall.