Off Prompt: British Illustrators 31:
Victor Ambrus
Victor Ambrus is another two-time
Greenaway Medal winner. Victor Ambrus was born and grew up in Hungary, where he
was studying in the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts during the failed 1956 revolution
against the Soviet backed regime. In December he and other students fled first
to Austria, then to Britain, where he hoped to study in the tradition of great
British illustrators such as E.H. Shepard, John Tenniel and Arthur Rackham.
Hungary’s loss has indisputably been Britain’s gain.
Victor Ambrus has illustrated a great
many children’s books, both fiction and non-fiction. I chose this sketch
because it illustrates two really important themes in his work, horses, and the
historical past. For several years Victor Ambrus’ illustrations formed an
important part of the popular British Archaeology documentary series Time Team,
in which a group of archaeologists, surveyors and archivists would be given
three days to carry out an investigation of a historical – or in some cases
pre-historical – site, and their discoveries would help inform the
illustrations which Victor would make of the site in its former heyday.
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