His legacy of 41 motion pictures transformed Arabic-speaking film. His ideas and cinematography have been emulated over the past 20 years throughout the Middle East, especially in Syria and Tunisia where there are budding film industries, by two generations of film-makers - many of whom were among Abu-Seif's students at the Egyptian Film Institute which he helped to establish in 1960. Abu-Seif was born in 1915, in Cairo's ancient quarter of Boolaq, to landowning parents from Upper Egypt. He was 12 years old when he saw the first full- length feature film made by an Egyptian, in 1927, at a local movie-house - earlier films were imports accompanied by Egyptian narrations, or made by Europeans living in Egypt.As the son of a conservative family, Abu-Seif graduated from the Cairo College of Commerce and Economics in 1932, while at the same time working as a freelance reporter following movie stars. But it was at his day job as a clerk in a factory that he met the Egyptian film-maker Niazy Mustapha, who was on a shoot there. She was a woman of great courage and indomitable spirit.Rosemary (Ray) Howard-Jones, artist: born Lambourn, Berkshire 30 May 1903; died London 25 June 1996..
Salah Abu-Seif was known as the father of realism in Egypt's film industry, which controls the cinematic taste of some 150 million Arab- speaking filmgoers and television viewers in the Middle East and beyond. Visitors were often invited into the garden, which could prove something of a relief since indoors one might be submerged under an avalanche of books, papers, sketches, letters and "found objects". Howard-Jones's niece Nicola was a constant support to her in these last years. Indeed, Ray Howard-Jones had always been adept at getting others to run round after her so that she, herself, was free to give everything to her art. She had taken particular care over her make-up, of which Wilson Steer would have been proud, for it more resembled her own paint palette than anything which could be conventionally regarded as cosmetics.Many will have memories of Ray Howard-Jones seated in her west London garden, voicing her strong opinions on drawing while she fed the birds. She was exhilarated to be in the limelight once more and appeared at the opening in a boldly decorated purple outfit with full sleeves. The exhibition coincided with Rocket's publication of her first book of poetry, Heart of the Rock, and a new monograph about her, The Elements of an Art, by Merlin James.
The show was of especial interest as Howard-Jones's most expressive work had developed since she was in her late eighties. By 1992 she no longer used a caravan, but instead spent her summer in a tin and wooden hut, perched on the Dyfed cliff, above the roar of the Atlantic Ocean. In the local village shops she would settle her bills with drawings and paintings.In 1993 Howard-Jones came back to the London art scene when the Rocket Press organised a retrospective of her work dating from the 1930s up until 1993 in Cork Street. Her trips down the M4, at carefree speed in a rickety Renault van, were enough to terrify fellow passengers. Howard-Jones gained spiritual support from being made an oblate of the order.Her annual trips to Wales had become more reclusive after her split from Moore in 1970 She appeared to revel in her isolation. In 1985 the Abbot of Nashdom, outside Slough, invited her to exhibit her work with the intention of "reviving and restoring the early tradition of the Benedictine Order in their allegiance with the creative arts". With the closure of the Leicester Galleries Howard- Jones had distanced herself from the London art scene, although the Welsh Arts Council organised two touring retrospectives of her work in 1974 and 1983-84.
Here too she could swim with the seals.During her lifetime, Ray Howard-Jones's work featured in almost 30 one- man shows in British art galleries and was represented in public collections world-wide, including the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth, Boston City Art Gallery in the United States, and the National Gallery of Southern Australia, Adelaide. More success followed in 1959 with her first full-scale show at the Leicester Galleries in London, the first in a series of five shows over the next 10 years which brought her acclaim on the national art scene. Although an oil painter of great skill, her true artistic spirit and style came out best in her use of gouache and pastel, and it was this medium that she increasingly devoted herself to.She could work quickly and out of doors. Many of her works depict her beloved Easter Bay (her name for Martin's Haven, close to the village of Marloes). She felt an affinity with the steep cliffs, which she was still climbing at the age of 89, and the rocks to which she gave private names - "Te Deum", "The Brother", "Cathedral of the Stac". The speciality organic chemicals division supplies pharmaceutical firms with the building blocks, called intermediates, for drugs.
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