Yesterday Wodehouse, today another bringer of quiet but profound joy into the world - the artist and illustrator Edward Ardizzone, born on this day in 1900. His easy style, with its gentle rounded lines and carefully modulated crosshatching, has an irresistible charm and is instantly, joyously recognisable. Almost any book is worth picking up if it's illustrated by Ardizzone - especially if he did the dust jacket too. His autobiographical writings, The Young Ardizzone and Baggage to the Enemy (about his experiences as a war artist), are worth seeking out, and there's a lovely volume of his Sketches for Friends. He never stopped drawing, and everything he made seems to breathe his generous, good-humoured love of life. For a taste of Ardizzone's world, take a tour of this website...
Thursday, 15 October 2009
Another Bringer of Joy
Yesterday Wodehouse, today another bringer of quiet but profound joy into the world - the artist and illustrator Edward Ardizzone, born on this day in 1900. His easy style, with its gentle rounded lines and carefully modulated crosshatching, has an irresistible charm and is instantly, joyously recognisable. Almost any book is worth picking up if it's illustrated by Ardizzone - especially if he did the dust jacket too. His autobiographical writings, The Young Ardizzone and Baggage to the Enemy (about his experiences as a war artist), are worth seeking out, and there's a lovely volume of his Sketches for Friends. He never stopped drawing, and everything he made seems to breathe his generous, good-humoured love of life. For a taste of Ardizzone's world, take a tour of this website...
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Hmm that's ended up with yesterday's date on it - Ardizzone's birthday is of course today - the 16th of October. Rejoice!
ReplyDeleteYes, it is very good to be reminded, as with Wodehouse yesterday, that a generous, warm, good-humoured and gentle view of life is not merely possible but desirable. That generation went through not one but two world wars, the horrors of which most of us cannot begin to imagine. Yet they produced a body of work that will still be treasured in a century's time. The Today programme had a piece on art earlier. It was all about the views of a hedge fund manager, crowing that his investments in Old Masters had shown a return of more than 40 per cent in only six months. Yay! Somehow, I feel that Wodehouse and Ardizzone are the answer to these, er, people. And the website you mention is a super example of how to do these things well on the net.
ReplyDeleteQuite so Mark - and Wodehouse also had to endure (with good humour, of course) that vile attempt by Duff Cooper and co to brand him a Nazi sympathiser. Some of that mud stuck for a surprisingly long time.
ReplyDeleteI must try and be good-humoured and gentle. Always fail somehow.
ReplyDeleteBryan! Is that you? Welcome back - you must have many tales to tell of strange and far-flung places. Norfolk for example...
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