British Illustrators 27: Ralph Steadman

Like Sir Quentin Blake and Helen Oxenbury, Ralph Steadman is still very much alive. Unlike them, he isn’t best known as an illustrator of children’s books. As early as his student days in the 60s, Ralph Steadman was contributing to satirical magazine Private Eye, and the Daily Telegraph in the UK, and the New York Times and Rolling Stone in the US.

Since then he has completed a huge body of work including satirical and political cartoons, album covers, posters for the Royal Shakespeare company, postage stamps for the Royal Mail, and also illustrations for editions of books including Treasure Island and Alice in Wonderland – two of my favourite children’s books of all time.

I agonised for a while over which illustration I wanted to copy, but in the end I decided that Ralph Steadman’s anarchic, almost explosive style lends itself more naturally to Alice in Wonderland. (Although I also love his Treasure Island illustrations too!)

British Illustrators 26: Helen Oxenbury and Alice Through the Looking Glass

Helen Oxenbury is a British illustrator of children’s books, who has twice won the Greenaway medal. Nobody has yet won it three times. She spent some of the early part of her career working in theatre design, and turned to illustrating children’s books after marrying fellow illustrator John Burningham.

I’m familiar with Helen Oxenbury mostly through books I’ve read with my children when they were young, and with my grandchildren. I’ve chosen to copy one of her illustrations from Alice through the Looking Glass. I’ve written before about my love of and fascination with the Alice books. While I will always love John Tenniel’s original illustrations, and they will always be the archetypal images of the books as far as I am concerned, Helen Oxenbury’s illustrations brought something new and interesting to the stories for me. Her Alice is a modern girl, which if anything makes her seem even more out of place amongst the strangeness of Wonderland and the Looking Glass world. Like Sir Quentin Blake, Helen Oxenbury is still going strong.

British Illustrators 25: Kate Greenaway and The Pied Piper of Hamelin

Kate Greenaway was amongst the most popular British illustrators of the Victorian period, and her popularity has never really diminished since. When, in the 1950s, the Library Association decided to inaugurate an annual prize for distinguished illustration in a book for children, it decided to name the medal after Kate Greenaway.

The daughter of an engraver, Kate Greenaway had to battle against the prejudice of the time in order to first study art, and then to make a living from it. For example, women were banned from attending life drawing classes. She first tasted commercial success designing greetings cards for printer Edmund Evans. In 1879 she wrote and illustrated a book of verses,”Under the Window” , which was a best seller, and from then until her death in 1901, aged 55, she remained one of the most poplar illustrators and designers in Britain.

This is a copy of an illustration she made to Robert Browning’s poem “The Pied Piper of Hamelin”.

British Illustrators 24:Randolph Caldecott and The House that Jack Built

It’s confession time. I hadn’t even heard of Randolph Caldecott until I was researching Kate Greenaway for a future post. Randolph Caldecott’s name came up several times, as one of Kate Greenaway’s very gifted contemporaries. Although born in England in Chester, it seems that he is more honoured in the USA, where the Caldecott medal, named in his honour, is presented for the most distinguished American picture book for children of the previous year.

Randolph Caldecott began as a clerk, but sent sketches and illustrations to many magazines and had them published. He hadn’t necessarily planned to become mainly an illustrator of children’s books, when Edmund Evans, a colour printer, having lost the services of Walter Crane engaged him to produce illustrations for two Christmas books. One of these was The House that Jack Built. So successful were they with the public that Caldecott would go on to produce two more books every Christmas until he died in 1886 at the age of 40. His health had always been poor, and he actually died in St. Augustine, Florida, where ironically he had taken a trip to help improve his health.

Contemporaries praised Caldecott for his simplicity, and I can echo this. The lack of Victorian fussiness about his work makes it seem far more timeless than some of his contemporaries.