Edward Ardizzone: Artist and Illustrator

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A meeting with his childhood friend Maurice Gorham results in Edward Ardizzone's first drawing for Radio Times. Peter Yates (1920-1982) was born in Leytonstone, East London, to Frank Yates, manager of a marine chandlery and Frances Margaret (née Clarke). and these whirlwind-rendered watercolours - that look careless to the dull-minded - are some of his finest. 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. His legacy persists through the many publications that remain in print bearing his compassionate imagery.

Though for a time forgotten, resurgent interest in the world of illustration and graphic design in the last 20 years has seen an increased popularity in the work of Ardizzone and his contemporaries Edward Bawden and Eric Ravilious, and his work is just now beginning to receive the critical attention it has always deserved. 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. By 1939 Ardizzone was regularly holding one-man exhibitions at the Bloomsbury Gallery and, later, the Leger Gallery.

Ardizzone was evacuated to England from Boulogne in late May 1940 and was immediately reassigned to work with Southern Command, documenting the rather peaceful everyday activities of service personnel in the UK at the time.

He attended school from the age of seven for at least two years, and at the age of nine – or such was his claim – he may have been employed as cabin boy to the fishermen working the waters off the Cornish coast. A Rigby, an authority on the artist Frank Branwyn whose murals adorned the school chapel, and Rigby encouraged Vaughan’s evident interest in the visual arts. Battle in an Orchard of Almond Trees in Sicily is a rare example of his wartime work which shows corpses. For the 50th anniversary of the Medal in 2005, the book was named one of the top ten winning titles, selected by a panel to compose the ballot for public election of an all-time favourite. He studied first at Armstrong College in Newcastle, and then at the Royal College of Art, London (1922-1927).His drawings along the way are among the bleakest of his wartime output, showing the devastation wrought on towns such as Louvain (Leuven) in Belgium, which formed part of the BEF’s frontline before the retreat. Tschudi attended The Grosvenor School only briefly – from 1929-30 – but throughout her life she would maintain a close working relationship with the Grosvenor School linocut tutor Claude Flight (see Artists). Attached to the Eighth Army, he adapted extremely well to military life and made many friends especially among war correspondents, enabling him access to transport and networks that he required. His focus on ordinary people coping in adversity meant mass audiences could understand and relate to his characters. She arranged his attendance at Maidenhead Technical Institute, after which Stanley attended the Slade School of Fine Art, London.

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.The ‘Phoney War’ came to a dramatic end when Germany launched attacks on France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg on 10 May.

His first exhibition was at the Lefevre Gallery, in 1937, but he exhibited at the Royal College of Art; the Waddington Galleries, the New Grafton Gallery; the Bohun Gallery; and Pallant House Gallery, Chichester. He was sent to Macedonia where he spent two years on the front line, facing German and Bulgarian troops, before being invalided out after experiencing bouts of malaria. On a short holiday to Paris and enthralled by the city and its history, Sasek realised that distracted parents with children in tow rarely seemed to interpret the city to their off-spring, and that sketches of his surroundings he was making might best be used as illustrations for a children’s book. To the utter dismay of his father, he left the security of his employment and by 1929 had had his first work published, illustrating Sheridan Le Fanu’s In a Glass Darkly.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.