The Illustrators

Quentin Blake (1932-)
The first-ever Children’s Laureate and one of the best-loved of all modern illustrators, Quentin Blake will be forever remembered for his work with Roald Dahl – Revolting Rhymes, The Enormous Crocodile, The BFG and others. The holder of a Cambridge degree in English as well as a Professorship at the Royal College of Art, Quentin Blake is the most literary of artists; Mr Magnolia is just one book among many he has published under his own name. His scratchily energetic style is instantly recognisable.
Reproduced with kind permission of the artist

Paul Cox (1957-)
Widely imitated but never quite equalled, the watercolour paintings of Paul Cox convey an infectious energy and a huge sense of fun. Everyone, it seems, is enjoying themselves in his bright, vivacious and undeniably English world. A familiar contributor to magazines as diverse as the Sunday supplements and the Gentleman’s Quarterly, Paul Cox has illustrated memorable editions of The Wind in the Willows and Three Men in a Boat.
Reproduced with kind permission of The Chris Beetles Gallery

William Heath Robinson (1872-1944)
One of the few illustrators whose name has become a self-perpetuating adjective, Heath Robinson is best known for his bizarre mechanical contraptions and other visual satires on the industrial age. In his early years, however, he had been the illustrator of Rabelais, Shakespeare and Edgar Allan Poe. His perverse logic and inexhaustible imagination have helped secure him a permanent place in the nation’s affections as the ‘Gadget King’.
Reproduced with kind permission of Pollinger Ltd

Gerald Hoffnung (1925-1959)
A musician of note as well as a first-rate cartoonist, Hoffnung was born in Berlin and raised in England. His first cartoon was published while he was still at school and later he freelanced for Punch and other magazines. He had the outsider’s perceptive take on British life: on entering a railway carriage, he solemnly advised visitors from foreign parts, it is customary to shake hands with one’s fellow passengers.
Reproduced with kind permission of The Chris Beetles Gallery

Arthur Rackham (1867-1939)
Rackham’s career as an illustrator spanned five decades and encompassed a wide variety of influences. His style, however, remained vividly individualistic, an intensely linear approach in which colour was muted and emotion downplayed. There was grotesquerie in his work – as well as Alice in Wonderland, he illustrated a memorable edition of Grimm’s Fairy Tales – and also a tremendous respect for and understanding of his source material, seen at its best in his 1910 interpretation of Wagner’s Ring of the Niebelung.
Reproduced with kind permission of The Bridgeman Art Gallery

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Ronald Searle (1920-)
Nigel Molesworth (‘The Curse of St Custards’) was the progeny of a collaboration between illustrator Ronald Searle and former prep school teacher Geoffrey Willans. Inky fingered, quietly subversive and an atrocious speller, Molesworth was an anti-hero every child could identify with. The four great Molesworth books – Down With Skool!, How to be Topp, Back in the Jug Agane and Whizz for Atomms – remain perennial bestsellers half a century after they were first published.
Reproduced with kind permission of the artist and the Sayle Literary Agency

E H Shepherd (1879-1976)
Ernest Howard Shepherd was already well established as a member of the Punch coterie when he was introduced to the writer A A Milne, precipitating When We Were Very Young (1924), Winnie the Pooh (1926) and The House at Pooh Corner (1928). Later Shepherd illustrated the definitive 1931 edition of Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows. He continued his parallel career as a political cartoonist until being unceremoniously sacked by Malcolm Muggeridge when he became editor of Punch in 1953.
Reproduced with kind permission of the Curtis Brown Group Ltd

John Tenniel (1820-1914)
Partially blind – the result of a fencing accident – Tenniel understudied the great John Leech at Punch before becoming its principal cartoonist in 1864, producing over two thousand cartoons in fifty years. He retired at the age of 80. He was also an illustrator of great renown; Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson) arranged their collaboration on the Alice books through a mutual acquaintance. Their personal relationship, however, was tempestuous; Tenniel declared Carroll was ‘impossible’ and refused all entreaties to work on later books such as The Hunting of the Snark.
Reproduced with kind permission of The Chris Beetles Gallery

Norman Thelwell (1923-)
‘At Punch I was a sort of unofficial country cartoonist, doing funny drawings that involved birds, cattle, pigs and poultry. One day I did a pony drawing and it was like striking a sensitive nerve. The response was instantaneous. People telephoned the editor and asked for more. Suddenly I had a fan mail. So the editor told me to do a two-page spread on ponies. I was appalled. I thought I’d already squeezed the subject dry. I looked at the white drawing block and wondered what on earth to do. In the end I dreamed up some more horsey ideas and people went into raptures. The ‘Thelwell pony’ was born…’
Reproduced with kind permission of Momentum Licensing

Wind of change.

Heavy turbulence often hits the City. When it’s blowing half a gale, and the markets shift on their moorings, that’s when you realise the value of a little financial stability…

William Heath Robinson, ‘Tis An Ill Wind (1929)

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