Month: July 2018

The Cow Flew Over the Moon…

Walter Crane (15 August 1845 – 14 March 1915) was an English artist and book illustrator. He is considered to be the most influential, and among the most prolific, children’s book creators of his generation^[1] and, along with Randolph Caldecott and Kate Greenaway, one of the strongest contributors to the child’s nursery motif that the genre of English children’s illustrated literature would exhibit in its developmental stages in the latter 19th century.

He was a fluent follower of the newer art movements and he came to study and appreciate the detailed senses of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and was also a diligent student of the renowned artist and critic John Ruskin. A set of coloured page designs to illustrate Tennyson’s “Lady of Shalott” gained the approval of wood-engraver William James Linton to whom Walter Crane was apprenticed for three years in 1859–62. As a wood-engraver he had abundant opportunity for the minute study of the contemporary artists whose work passed through his hands, of Pre-Raphaelites Dante Gabriel Rossetti and John Everett Millais, as well as Alice in Wonderland illustrator Sir John Tenniel and Frederick Sandys. He was a student who admired the masters of the Italian Renaissance, however he was more influenced by the Elgin marbles in the British Museum. A further and important element in the development of his talent was the study of Japanese colour-prints, the methods of which he imitated in a series of toy books, which started a new fashion.

Crane’s work featured some of the more colourful and detailed beginnings of the child-in-the-garden motifs that would characterize many nursery rhymes and children’s stories for decades to come. He was part of the Arts and Crafts movement and produced an array of paintings, illustrations, children’s books, ceramic tiles and other decorative arts. Crane is also remembered for his creation of a number of iconic images associated with the international Socialist movement.

Gallery

For more info:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Crane

~Cheers,
Chris

Sinbad!

René Bull was a British illustrator and photographer. He was born in Dublin on 11 December 1872 to a French mother and an English father. He went to Paris to study engineering, but embarked on an artistic career after meeting and taking drawing lessons from the French satirist and political cartoonist Caran d’Ache (Emmanuel Poiré) ^[1]. Bull returned to Ireland to contribute sketches and political cartoons to various publications, including the ‘Weekly Freeman’.

Moving to London in 1892, Bull drew for “Illustrated Brits” and created cartoons in the style of Caran d’Ache for ‘Pick-Me-Up’ from 1893. In 1896 Bull joined Black and White illustrated newspaper as a special artist and photographer. In 1898, he covered the Tirah Campaign in India and went on to Sudan for the campaign culminating in the Battle of Omdurman. He went to South Africa to record the Boer War until the relief of Ladysmith in March 1900. As he was wounded in 1900, Bull was invalided out.

He settled in England and drew cartoons for such magazines as Bystander, Chums, London Opinion, Lika Joko. In The Sketch Bull created cartoons of humorous inventions, predating those of William Heath Robinson. From 1905 he illustrated books, starting with an edition of Fontaine’s ‘Fables’. Other major titles he illustrated included The Arabian Nights (1912), Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (1913), The Russian Ballet (1913), Carmen (1915), Andersen’s Fairy Tales. In 1914, Bull joined the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve as a lieutenant and was eventually transferred to the Royal Air Force where he reached the rank of Major. In World War II Bull joined the Air Ministry for technical duties. He died on 14 March 1942.

Books

• Jean De La Fontaine – Fables (Nelson, 1905)
• Frank A. Saville – Fate’s Intruder: A Novel (Heinemann, 1905)
• Joel Chandler Harris – Uncle Remus (Nelson, 1906)
• The Arabian Nights (Constable, 1912)
• Alfred Edwin Johnson – The Russian Ballet (1913)
• Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (Hodder, 1913)
• Prosper Mérimée (Trans. A. E. Johnson) – Carmen (Hutchinson, 1915)
• Hubert Strang – The Old Man Of The Mountain (Hodder, 1916)
• Jonathan Swift – Gulliver’s Travels (1928)
• Rose Fyleman – A Garland of Roses: Collected Poems (Methuen, 1928)
• Hans Christian Andersen – Fairy Tales (Clowes, c. 1928)
• Joel Chandler Harris – Brer Rabbit Plays (Retold by Elizabeth Fleming) (Nelson, 1930)
• Jean De La Fontaine – Fables: A Selection (Trans. Shirley Edward) (1935)
• Zoo Friends (Blackie, 1939)
• Various – The Children’s Golden Treasure Book of 1939

Gallery

For more info:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Bull

~Cheers
Chris