My father, Tony Strong, who has died aged 102, was a talented artist working in the theatre, television and film industries.
He started his career in Covent Garden, London, working for the Royal Opera House with Oliver Messel, and the Theatre Royal, and remained there until the early 1960s when he took a job as a scenic artist in the brand new TV industry, first with Rediffusion Television.
In 1972 Tony started his own company, Tony Strong Scenic Art, and enjoyed a long working life creating artworks that many people will have seen in their favourite films and TV shows, and collaborating with directors including Stanley Kubrick, Ken Russell, David Lynch and Sidney Lumet.
Tony used a huge variety of techniques for his work on 33 films over five decades. Murder on the Orient Express (1974) required a 40ft x 1,314ft backdrop, but he also created very detailed items such as the tarot cards in the 1973 James Bond film Live and Let Die. His other film credits include The Elephant Man (1980) and The Shining (1984).
Through another company he founded, Lumigraph Transparencies, Tony pioneered painting on acrylic that could be backlit, a technique that created bright colourful advertising billboards in Piccadilly Circus in the 60s and 70s, and was also used by Lumet for Murder on the Orient Express. Tony developed a way of reproducing tapestries in paint, and made more than 200 of them, many of which are in the collection at the Classic Prop Hire company.
Even after Tony retired, his artworks remained in demand for films and TV. In the past 18 months they have been used extensively, including in the BBC series A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder, and the Florence & the Machine video My Love, with some still in production, such as Cillian Murphy’s forthcoming film, Steve, for Netflix.
The elder son of Gwen and Percy Strong, Tony was born and raised in Maidenhead, Berkshire. His mother was a singer and his father was a leading cinematographer in the 1920s; the couple had met on the top deck of a London bus when they noticed that they were both reading the jobs section of Variety. From the age of 10 or so, Tony accompanied Percy to film studios and on location. It left a lasting impression.
During the second world war Tony served in the Merchant Navy, where his artistic talent was also utilised to paint flying jackets for US air crews. The medical room of RMS Queen Elizabeth, then serving as a troopship, was his studio.
When the ship was docked for repairs in the Brooklyn Naval Yard Tony found work painting advertisements in Times Square. He married Joan Chilman, a nurse, in London in 1943 during the blitz. Working as an artist at the Scenic Painting Rooms at 23 Macklin Street, Covent Garden, after the war Tony was tutored by the painter Feliks Topolski, who had a studio nearby.
From their first family home in west London, Joan and Tony moved to Buckinghamshire in the 50s, and finally settled in Middleton Park, Oxfordshire, designed by Edwin Lutyens, where Tony continued to live after Joan’s death in 2020. He swam and cycled almost every day until he reached his mid-90s.
Tony is survived by two children – my sister, Vanessa, and me – six grandchildren and six great-grandchildren
