British Illustrators 34: Judith Kerr

The late Judith Kerr, who passed away in 2019, will always be remembered for the ever popular “The Tiger who came to Tea”. She also created the Mog series, and wrote “When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit”. She had personal experience to draw on for that book, since she was born in Weimar Germany, but her parents both knew that Nazi success in the 1933 elections could spell potential disaster for a Jewish family such as themselves, and the family moved to France before settling in Britain.

Judith Kerr became a naturalised British subject, and married Nigel Kneale. That name might not mean a great deal to you if you’re not British or of a certain age, but he wrote “Quatermass” which was the first TV science fiction serial to gain mass appeal in the UK, and led to 3 spin off films. Their son, Matthew Kneale is no mean writer himself. He wrote an excellent historical novel “English Passengers” which I can thoroughly recommend. Coming back to “The Tiger Who Came To Tea”, it was published in 1968, and has remained hugely popular ever since. Judith Kerr created the story after a visit to the zoo with her three year old daughter. It took her a year to make the book, and it has since become one of the best selling children’s books of all time. 

British Illustrators 33: Edmund Dulac and The Little Mermaid

Edmund Dulac was actually born French, but moved to England in his early 20s, and became a British citizen in 1912.

On arrival in London, Dulac was commissioned to illustrate Dent’s edition Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. He worked for the Pall Mall Gazette, and then was commissioned by Hodder and Stoughton to illustrate a number of books, including the works of Hans Christian Anderson, from which I have tried to copy an illustration he made of the Little Mermaid.

When I look at Dulac’s illustrations for this and other books I am struck that he works in a similar style to his contemporary Arthur Rackham. After the first World War there was much less demand for illustrated picture books of the style he had been producing before, and so he moved into other areas, such as newspaper caricatures, portraiture and theatre design. Like later illustrators Ralph Steadman and Gerald Scarfe, Dulac also illustrated postage stamps for the Royal Mail.

British Illustrators 32: Edward Burne Jones

Burne-Jones is associated with both the Pre Raphaelite-Brotherhood, whom he admired tremendously in his early years, and also with the Arts and Crafts Movement. He was a pre-eminent artist in the field of stained glass, and also a founder member, with William Morris, or Morris’ decorative arts firm. As well as his own paintings, and his work in the field of stained glass and of design, Burne-Jones also illustrated a number of works for Morris’ Kelmscott Press. In this illustration, copied from an illustration of the Kelmscott’s Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, Burne-Jones’ distinctive almost medieval style is a perfect match for the subject matter.

Burne-Jones was very influential on the next generation of artists and illustrators in England as well. The teenage Aubrey Beardsley made a speculative visit to Burne-Jones’ home, and showed him sone of his sketches. Burne-Jones allegedly told him that he was not in the habit of advising young people to become artists, but he had no choice but to do so in Beardsley’s case. Quite right too. In the 1890s he became something of a pillar of the establishment, being made a Baronet (A baronetcy is a hereditary knighthood – an ordinary knighthood passes away on the death of the recipient.)

British Illustrators 31: Victor Ambrus

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. 

British Illustrators 30: Gerald Scarfe and The Wall

Gerald Scarfe is another great British illustrator whom I’ve chosen to include even though he’s most definitely not known for illustrations to children’s books.

Gerald Scarfe at one point studied at the same time as Ralph Steadman at East Ham Technical College. The two fell out when working for the Daily Mail. After a brief career in advertising, Gerald Scarfe became a savage political cartoonist, possibly the best known in the UK. Like Steadman, he has worked for a wide range of publications in the UK and the US, he has designed postage stamps for the Royal Mail. He famously worked with the band Pink Floyd on the album “The Wall”, and this is why I have copied one of the illustrations he produced for the album. On my 17^th birthday I saw Pink Floyd performing The Wall at Earl’s Court in London, and Scarfe’s work in the form of animations, projections, and huge inflatables, played a crucial part in the performance and the experience. If you look at the picture and the words “You, yes, you. Stand still laddie!” come into your mind, then you’re probably a Floyd fan as well. 

British Illustrators 28: Carl Giles and Grandma

I haven’t chosen Carl Giles because he illustrated children’s books. He didn’t. Carl Giles was actually a political cartoonist in the UK’s Daily Express newspaper from the early 1940s until 1989.

So why am I including him? Well, Giles’ popularity became so great that from 1946 onwards, Giles cartoons for the previous year were published in an annual. I first encountered them as a kid, when I read one in a doctor’s waiting room. I didn’t get a lot of the jokes, not knowing the context. However I was captivated by the images. In many of his cartoons, Giles used his fictionalised ‘Giles’ family, and the grandmother, “Grandma” became something of a national institution. So much so that there is actually a statue of Grandma in Ipswich, Giles’ adopted hometown. In many English households the arrival of the Giles annual became something of a Christmas institution. I learned a lot about England in the late 50s and early 60s, before I was born, from reading old Giles annuals.

I had to copy Grandma, of course, but a typical Giles cartoon has much more to it than one or two characters. There’s often a whole other level of humour going on in the background, and they’re the sort of thing you can look at two or three times, and still see something new in them.

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!)