Edward Ardizzone: Artist and Illustrator

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The first book by Ardizzone listed by the US Library of Congress is The Mediterranean: An Anthology (London: Cassell, 1935, OCLC 2891569), compiled by Paul Bloomfield, "decorated by Edward Ardizzone" with "each chapter preceded by illustrated half-title". In Britain, he recorded troops at their training camps and spent nights sketching in the London Underground, where tube tunnels were being used as air-raid shelters during the Blitz. During the war Ardizzone was appointed Official War Artist by Sir Kenneth Clark (of ‘Civilization’ fame – an admirer and collector of Ardizzone’s work). The Committee’s minutes of the following month note that arrangements had been made for him to paint ‘coming events’. 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.

By 1939 Ardizzone was regularly holding one-man exhibitions at the Bloomsbury Gallery and, later, the Leger Gallery.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. Their shared grandmother had told the stories to both cousins and she had learned them from her father. Ardizzone's first major commission was to illustrate an edition of In a Glass Darkly by Sheridan Le Fanu in 1929. After the war he established a strong following as a book illustrator, titles ranging from Walter de la Mare’s Peacock Pie and John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress to H E Bates’ Uncle Silas stories and Maurice Gorham’s Back to the Local.

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.When Ardizzone was four or five years old his mother brought him and two siblings to Suffolk to be looked after by their grandmother so that she and her husband could remain in the Far East. He also illustrated a re-telling of the Don Quixote story for children by James Reeves and his illustrations for The Land of Green Ginger by Noel Langley are regarded as classics in their own right. Born in 1900, at Haiphong, Tonking, Indo-China, to Italian and Scottish parents, Ardizzone came to England when he was five. Remains working mostly in London in the blitz – arrested (by the Home Guard) as a spy for sketching in the East End of London. Underwood was born in London, eldest child to Theodore George Black Underwood, a print dealer and numismatist, and his wife Rose Ellen Cornelius who supplemented the family income as a dressmaker.

His style was naturalistic but subdued, featuring gentle lines and delicate watercolours, with great attention to particular details. 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.The commission was to become the first of the many illustrated texts for which he would be best known, excitedly completed after having lived and dreamt that book for three whole months.