Edward Ardizzone: Artist and Illustrator

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Julian Trevelyan ‘Trevelyan was brilliantly inventive and possessed a wit and innocence of eye that could discover enchantment in the most mundane scenes’. He went on to become Head of Drawing and Painting at Gloucester College of Art (1931) where he taught until his retirement in 1963. Edward Ardizzone was born in the port city of Haiphong, then known as Tonkin, in the north of French Indo-China, a city now in Vietnam, while his father was working for the Eastern Extension Telegraph Company. To see’ is an artist’s starting point; to translate that vision into both three dimensional space and two dimensional representation, into both buildings and paintings, was Yates’s life-long concern, both as architect and as painter.

Edward Ardizzone (1900 – 1979) was an English painter, print-maker and war artist, and the author and illustrator of many children's books, most famous of which being The Adventures of Tim series. Ardizzone acknowledged that his style was not so suited to scenes of violence and even less so to places that had been deserted of people entirely. On inheriting a sum of money from his father Ardizzone left his job as clerk, got married to Catherine Anderson, and set up as a freelance artist. Tschudi was first introduced to the linocut when, still a school-girl, she saw an exhibition of the colour cuts of animals by Norbertine Bresslern-Roth (1891-1978). Here they moved from place to place, but they were never too far from Ipswich where Edward’s grandmother resided.According to CCSU, some runners-up through 2002 were Commended (from 1959) or Highly Commended (from 1974). In 1936 he inaugurated his best-known work, the Tim series of books, featuring the maritime adventures of its eponymous young hero, which he both wrote and illustrated. What Vaughan saw in ballet was the groupings of people, and people in movement – aspects which would stay as preoccupations and evidence themselves in much of his later work. His focus on ordinary people coping in adversity meant mass audiences could understand and relate to his characters. But from the age of twenty there is clearer evidence for a sea-faring occupation since Wallis is listed as crew-member with the Belle Adventure, one of the many great sailing ships – schooners and brigantines – which carried global trade between 1820-1890 from UK ports to Europe and the United States.

However, in March 1944, the Admiralty asked the WAAC if they could have him ‘on loan’ from the War Office.Early in the 1970s, Ardizzone illustrated a new edition of the 20-year-old Little books by Graham Greene: The Little Train, The Little Fire Engine, The Little Horse Bus, and The Little Steamroller. He travelled on through Italy with the Eighth Army until April 1944, when he flew to Algiers, from where he sailed back to Britain. Publication of Brian Alderson's Edward Ardizzone, A Preliminary Hand List of his Illustrated Books 1929-70. From 1931-33 Tschudi lived in Paris and studied with the Cubist artist André Lhote, then with the Futurist Gino Severini at the Academie Ronson, and finally under Fernand Léger at the Academie Moderne. He also wrote and illustrated his own children’s books, such as Little Tim and the Brave Sea Captain.

Born in 1981 to a Japanese mother and an English father Takahashi grew up in North London before studying Fine Art at Bath Spa University College and Middlesex University. Yates joined the RAF (1941) and was stationed first in Wales and then in Ireland, before embarking for Versailles just outside of Paris (1944). Other famous commissions included illustrations for Clive King's Stig of the Dump, whose iconic cover art helped place the book alongside the greats of children's literature to remain on bookshelves ever since. Agreeing a compromise, his father sent him to study machine draughtsmanship at the Knirr School of Art, Munich, with the thought that this would give his son a skill he might apply professionally. Leon Underwood Leon George Claude Underwood (1890-1975) worked in several media – as linocutter, painter, etcher, wood-engraver and sculptor; he also taught and wrote extensively on the philosophy and theory of art.He continued to travel around, reaching Rimini at the time of its fall and going on to visit Forli, Cesena, Riccione, Rome, Florence and Ravenna. He left behind him a wealth of acclaimed artistic work and a significant contribution to the canon of book illustration. At this time the major theme of his paintings was life in London, with affectionate illustrations of the pubs and parks near his home in Maida Vale. He had his son home schooled from their house ‘Fernlea’, in Cookham, but also sent him for private drawing lessons to local artist Dorothy Bailey.

His style was naturalistic but subdued, featuring gentle lines and delicate watercolours, with great attention to particular details.

After schooling in Edinburgh, and contrary to his father’s wishes, Edward did not take up work at the mill; he wanted instead to study art. Justin Wintle and Emma Fisher, 'Edward Ardizzone', in The Pied Pipers: Interviews with the influential creators of children's literature, (1975. and these whirlwind-rendered watercolours - that look careless to the dull-minded - are some of his finest.