BRIAN’S ILLUSTRATED LIFE STORY

INTRODUCTION

- AT THE END OF EACH PAGE IS A LINK TO THE NEXT -

THE TREASURE TROVE

It is winter in Savanac, a small village eighty miles north of Toulouse in the Lot river valley, south-western France. Rebecca is sitting on a beautiful chair, one of eight, bought by her parents at Heals in London in the 60s. They now live in her brother Simon’s studio, a vast oak timbered loft. She is holding her father’s book, Mother Goose, (now called Favourite Nursery Rhymes.) Gazing at the pigtailed little girl, warming her feet in front of a blazing fire of colour, she turns to her sister Clare who is busy filing decades of reviews. “Did you know I was his model for this picture?” Rebecca was only five at the time and that illustration was painted 55 years ago. It was one of well over one thousand that earned him the title, ‘Magician’ or ‘Master of Colour’, often found in newspaper articles and reviews.

Brian Lawrence Wildsmith passed away on 31st August 2016, just over a year after Aurélie, our mother. They had been together for 60 years, their entire adult life. The family home in the south of France was sold and the contents of Brian’s studio sent to his son Simon’s house: paintings, illustrations, drawings, sketches, reviews, interviews, catalogues, slides, photographs and countless other pieces of memorabilia accumulated throughout his life. He kept everything, and fortunately Simon had the space to store it all. They would be kept there for almost three years, the time it would take to pore over the lot before moving them to a safe and secure location.

”Inheriting this body of work,” he says, “is an extraordinary privilege and one hell of an education, even to us his kids! There is so much we never knew about, have never seen: from his art school scholarship application drawings, to his early, beautiful and delicate first book wrapper pen and ink drawings, the photographs of his trips around the world, the sketchbooks he took with him and of course, the better known colour works that so many millions have enjoyed in his books. What an immense, incommensurably talented man he was! I often watched him draw and paint and what always struck me was his unfailing confidence and sure-handed rapidity of execution. He had it all worked out before he even sharpened a pencil, something he never did with a pencil sharpener, always with a Stanley knife, the big old grey metal ones, producing a long and spear-like, ever so sharp point that always impressed me… a creation weapon!”

The treasures we discovered or re-discovered during those months of cataloguing and organising were such a revelation. Clearly, it was our responsibility to take great care of them and most importantly, share them. The internet, which had not been part of our father’s life, is the perfect means for that. It will serve us here to showcase this outstanding body of work, not only with those already acquainted with some of it, but more importantly perhaps, with those to whom he and his work are unknown. We will be working hard at bringing Brian’s work before a new generation of parent and child, because we truly believe that for a child to have a Wildsmith book to brood over, is to offer them something a little special to feed their heart and soul.

On a more personal level, our motivation is equalled by a strong desire to pay homage to our father. He had given us so much and this is our thank you. Besides, we are quite possibly his greatest fans and he would have loved this project - for his children to tell his life story and punctuate it with his immense palette of colour! Artists have egos you know, and Brian, most certainly, was no exception.

For this ‘Illustrated Life Story’ we have chosen to use parts of A Short Autobiography, written by Brian in 1988, intermingled with our personal memories and anecdotes as well as information gathered from the countless documents, essays, articles and reviews we have found. To those innumerable authors and journalists, we wish to give credit and thank most whole heartedly. Retained primary sources are listed below.

Brian wrote and illustrated books, but first and foremost he was an artist in the true sense of the word and a painter, a painter who happened to fall in love with illustrating books for children: 82 in total, once translated into 30 languages, published in 45 countries with worldwide sales of over 20 million.

Of our father’s achievements, Professor Martin Salisbury of Cambridge School of Art said in 2019, “Brian Wildsmith redefined the children’s picture book by bringing these painterly concerns to the pages of books with a tacit respect for children’s ability to appreciate good art. His work feels as fresh and contemporary today as it did when created.”

On this website you will find dozens of drawings and illustrations that have not been seen since they were first published in the 50s and 60s, alongside countless later sketches, illustrations, silk screens, private works, photographs and paintings that have never before been shown in public.

We hope you enjoy the journey in discovery of this immense artist as much as we have enjoyed creating it for you… and for him!

Discovering early illustrations, sketch books, note pads and photographs we had never seen - a lifetime devoted to education through art. Rebecca picks up Brian’s illustration for the cover of Prince of the Jungle, 1958, by René Guillot, seen below. Also enlarged from above, a promotional photograph of Brian taken in New York in the 1970s and Little Jack Horner from Mother Goose, 1964.

Continued - CHAPTER 1 : 1930 - 1949 : THE YORKSHIRE YEARS - FROM CHEMISTRY TO ART SCHOOL

SOURCES

Alex Fitch / Panel Borders, The Art of Brian Wildsmith, 2010 Radio Interview, Resonance / 104.4FM https://archive.org/details/PanelBordersTheArtOfBrianWildsmith

Brian Wildsmith / A Short Autobiography, edited by Adèle Sarkissian and published in Something About The Author, Autobiography Series, Vol 5 © Gale Research Cie, Book Tower, Detroit, U.S.A. 1988

Bettina Hürlimann / Seven Houses, My Life With Books, Bodley Head, 1976, British Children’s Books, The National Book League, Gwynne Printers Ltd, 1973

Cornelia Jones, Interviews at Home - British Children’s Authors ©American Library Association, 1976

Daisaku Ikeda / Opening the Door to a World of Dreams, Hope and Magic

Douglas Martin / The Telling Line, essays on fifteen contemporary book illustrators, Julia McRae Books, a division of Walker Books, 1989

Elaine Moss / Books for Keeps N° 38. The British critic and librarian looks at the development in picture books over the last twenty five years

History of Oxford University Press, Vol III 1896-1970 edited by Ian Anders Gadd, Simon Eliot and William Roger Louis

Imaginative Book Illustration, Society Newsletter, N°11, Spring 1999

The Junior Bookshelf, Volume 27, N°3, July 1963, Lee Bennett Hopkins / Books are by People, Citation Press, N.Y. 1969

Margery Fisher / Intent Upon Reading, Franklin Watts, 1961

Merryn Threadgould, producer and director of the TV programme When We Were Very Young, BBC Bristol and BBC4

Below - Clare, Simon, Rebecca Wildsmith