British Illustrators 18: Rudyard Kipling and Just So Stories

Now, don’t misunderstand me, I liked “The Jungle Book” when I read it. The problem was, though, that I’d already seen Disney’s wonderful film version, and this was something altogether different. My favourites of Kipling’s works are a number of his poems, and also his “Just So Stories”. These are stories, concerning how various animals came to be the way that they are, that Kipling made up for his daughter Josephine. The title comes from the fact that Kipling had to tell each tale exactly the same way he had told it previously – just so – or Josephine would complain. Maybe it’s because these stories were so personal to his own family that Kipling decided to illustrate the stories himself. I’ve copied The Elephant’s Child, which may possibly be the best known of the collection. Looking at it you can see that either his Dad taught him a thing or two about art, or he inherited some of his old man’s talent, because there’s not just skill at draughtsmanship here, but also a strong sense of the effect you can get by using large areas of black within a monochrome sketch. I can only surmise that maybe Kipling was just too prolific a writer to have the time to illustrate his own books for the most part, but even if just for his illustrations to the Just So Stories alone he deserves to be considered among the ranks of very fine writer-illustrators.

British Illustrators 17: John Lockwood Kipling and The Jungle Book

Yes, we all know that “The Jungle Book” was written by Rudyard Kipling, but be honest, how many of us knew that the original illustrations for the book were made by Kipling’s father, John Lockwood Kipling? I didn’t, that’s for sure.

I’ll be honest, I only found this out while researching who the original illustrator of Kipling’s “The Jungle Book” was. John Lockwood Kipling first moved to India from England in the 1860s to teach architectural sculpture at a school of Art in Mumbai, where he later became the school Principal. He was later commissioned by the government to make sketches of Indian craftsmen, and moved to teach in Lahore, where he also became curator of the original Lahore Museum. On retirement in 1893 he returned to England. John Lockwood Kipling’s work is that of a professional and highly competent professional artist of his era. In particular, the pencil and ink sketches he made of Indian craftsmen at work are very effective and evocative.

One shouldn’t speculate about the relationship between John Lockwood Kipling and his son Rudyard, but it’s hard not to. On the one hand Rudyard would call his own beloved son John, and turned to John Lockwood to provide illustrations for several of his works. On the other hand, certainly with “The Jungle Book” but also others of his works, childhood loss and abandonment are significant themes, and maybe this is a reflection of the trauma Rudyard went through when sent at age 5 to school in England.