To War with Paper and Brush: Captain Edward Ardizzone: Official War Artist
- Artist: Edward Ardizzone
- Published: 2007
- Publisher: Fleece Press, Upper Denby
- Edition: First
- Format: Oblong
- Pages: 170
- Illustrations: Illustrated throughout in colour and black & white
£225.00
Add to basketTo War with Paper and Brush: Captain Edward Ardizzone: Official War Artist
Limited edition of 600 copies.
This Ardizzone book is another of the major four-colour books printed out-of-house but entirely conceived, organised, designed and typeset by one person; together with the author Malcolm Yorke, whose earlier book for the Press on Edward Bawden was so successful.
Ardizzone's Diary of a War Artist has been the only book relating to his wartime experiences in many British locations as well as on the front line in France, Belgium, Italy, North Africa, Sicily, Denmark and Germany and consists of the edited diaries which the artist kept.
To War with Paper and Brush traces and assesses his extraordinary wartime path, and is illustrated with a great many original watercolours, line-drawings and photographs.
In true Fleece Press style this book is beautifully made and very heavily illustrated. Printed in Sheffield by J. W. Northend on the uncoated but smooth Monadnock Dulcet paper in an edition of 600 copies (the colophon mistakenly reads 700), all copies are bound in full Record Leinen cloth with an accompanying slipcase.
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Artists Biography
Edward Ardizzone – universally known as ‘Ted’ - was born in Haiphon, French Indo-China (now Vietnam) to a father of Italian extraction and an English mother. Whilst his father stayed in the Far East working for the Eastern Extension Telegraph Company, his mother brought the five year old Edward to live in England. Here they moved from place to place, but they were never too far from Ipswich where Edward’s grandmother resided. At Ipswich the young Ardizzone explored the docks, met the sailors and established the memories which would later form the basis for the famous Little Tim books.
Ardizzone went to Clayesmore School in Dorset – a school which encouraged his interest in drawing (if not quite to the extent intended: Ardizzone recalls schooldays ‘ill spent’..in..‘scribbling over my lessons’*). But his interest in drawing stayed with him, and after the day time committments of his first job as clerk for the Eastern Telegraph Company Ardizzone took evening classes in life-drawing at Westminster School of Art, London.
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. His first commissioned break came by way of Johnny Walker – the whisky distillers - who wanted drawings for commercial use; but it was not until his first show at the Bloomsbury Gallery that Ardizzone started to attract the kind of critical acclaim he was later to achieve. And this show also led to his first contract as book illustrator of Sheridan Lefanu’s ‘In a Glass Darkly’ (1929).
During the war Ardizzone was appointed Official War Artist by Sir Kenneth Clark (of ‘Civilization’ fame – an admirer and collector of Ardizzone’s work). He was sent first to France and then to the Middle East. But on his return trips to England he continued to illustrate and soon, with a work he created and which was published just before the War - ‘Little Tim and the Brave Sea Captain’ - his work began to attract the following it now enjoys.
Ardizzone had three children, Christianna, Philip and Nicholas. When young he would make up stories to tell them - an accomplishment he inherited from his mother; and it has often been said that, because the Tim books were initiated from the spoken word, it is possible to hear, even though transcribed into text, the sonorous tones of the writer’s voice.
Ardizzone always maintained that the art of a children’s book illustrator was particularly good when it was created as much for the child within the illustrator, as for the child viewing the illustrations. And this, almost certainly, is why the Tim books have just as much appeal for adults as they do for children; and why, too, there is no condescension in either the writing or the illustrations for the books.
In 1956 Ardizzone was to win the first Kate Greenaway medal for the pictures in the Tim books. But the illustrations have received universal acclaim from those young and old. The New York Times heralds Ardizzone as being able to paint…’the wettest sea you ever saw’. And one of the greatest children’s illustrators himself, Maurice Sendak, declares the books…’the saltiest and most satisfying picture books created...’.
