Feliks Topolski with his Chelsea Arts Ball backdrop, Albert Hall, London, UK, 1959 (b/w photo)

Feliks Topolski: (b Warsaw, 14 Aug. 1907; d London, 24 Aug. 1989). Polish-born painter and draughtsman who settled in England in 1935 and became a British subject in 1947. A versatile and prolific artist, he is perhaps best known for his large murals, notably the Coronation of Elizabeth II (30 × 1.2 m (100 × 4 ft) in Buckingham Palace (1958–60). He was an Official War Artist 1940–5, and his other work includes portraits and book illustrations. His style is characterized by the use of vigorous swirling line. The artist Feliks Topolski (seen lower left in the Albert Hall) surveys his giant backdrop for the Chelsea Arts Ball, New Year’s Eve 1958/59. Topolski did the original charcoal sketch, about 15x20 inches, enlarged by scene painters to 50x75 feet under his supervision. The Chelsea Arts Ball was once described as 'the most scandalous event on the social calendar'. It began in the nineteenth-century when artists in bizarre costumes, inspired by famous paintings, held an annual ball, accomodating about 4,000 people, to subsidise the newly-founded Chelsea Arts Club. From 1910 the Ball was held in the Albert Hall. In 1946 two artists' models stripped stark naked to spark up the scene. In later years fights broke out, and police parked their paddy-wagons outside the Hall to accommodate the drunken revellers.