Sunday 31 May 2009

A DAME NUISANCE

Dame Eileen Atkins (right, in Edward Bond's The Sea) has been complaining that airline on-line booking sites do not include 'Dame' on the drop-down menu for 'title'.

If, however, she were booking tickets for Royal Ascot (in order to observe the Sport of Kings) she'd be spoilt for choice.

Roger & Sheila inform me that if you visit the race-course's on-line site, the menu in the name and address field has in the region of 30 different options, including: 'Dowager Countess', 'Right Reverend', 'Major-General' and 'His Excellency' to name(drop) but a few.

"One can imagine," says Sheila, "the fun they must have had in the Ascot ticket office working through Debrett's to find all possible titles that might be necessary."

Roger (who is, as he says - without a trace of bitterness, I am sure - "just plain Mr") adds: "I'll have to get my brother-in-law to complain that there's no designation for 'Past Master of the Company of Watermen and Lightermen'!"

With so many problems in life, it's good to know that there's one thing one doesn't have to worry about!

Friday 29 May 2009

A TASTE O' THE CAT

As some of you may know, I'm rather keen on Cheshire Cats and especially the one who regularly appears (and disappears) in Walt Disney's 1951 film version of Alice in Wonderland. For proof of this obsession (madness isn't stroing enough a word!) see here and various other elsewheres!


Back in 2006, I blogged about an art exhibition devoted to the film feline which included a series of Disney cats customised by contemporary artists, like this Spanish puss by Irene Garcia...


Well, the vinyl figure which provided the basis for those interpretations is now being commercially marketed - presumably as a result of the inexplicable wave of popularity which keeps the tedious Pirates of the Caribbean film franchise afloat - as a PIRATE!

These buccaneering moggies come decked out in a stripped sailor shirt and sporting anchor tattoos, an eye-patch and a gold tooth...


Oh, yes, and - underneath - one wooden leg!


Actually, if the Cheshire Cat became a crew member of the Black Pearl, I might almost be tempted to endure the forthcoming Pirates of the Caribbean 4.

Then again.........


I'll leave you with first encounter between Alice (spoken for by Kathryn Beaumont) and the Cheshire Cat in the film during which the crazy character (voiced by Sterling Holloway) sings the opening verse of that Looking Glass ballad, 'Jabberwocky'...



Wednesday 27 May 2009

BAGS OF ADVICE

A while ago now, I posted images featuring interesting bag advertisements (check them out)...

Well, here's another one, this time promoting a product to help nail-biters stop from chomping their mitts...

And here's what they look like when they're being carried!


But...

If you're a nail-biter would you really want to admit to that fact by carrying a bag announcing that you were trying to quit?

Anyway, here's another bag, this time not hanging on by the skin of its teeth but going hand-in-hand with a promotion for autism awareness...


What remains a mystery to me is how it happens - with all this inventiveness in carrier-bag-design in evidence - that I always end up the ones where, by the time I get home, all the black (red, green or blue) print has come off on my hand?

Monday 25 May 2009

IMPROBABILITIES

I've always had a deep fascination with and a high regard for the extraordinary art of M C Escher, famous for creating amazing graphic designs especially of structural impossibilities...


Maurits Cornelis Escher (1898-1972) lived and worked in the Netherlands, and created his first 'impossible reality' in 1937 with the woodcut print, Still Life and Street...


Escher's exercises in playing with perspectives and perceptions have delighted generations the world over and have even inspired enthusiasts to recreate his implausible buildings in LEGO...

Now, I've discovered the work of Erik Johansson from Göteborg, Sweden, who - with manipulated photographic imagery - is creating similarly perplexing visual paradoxes.

Here are a few comparable puzzles from these two artists and you can click on any image to enlarge...











Images: M C Escher and Erik Johansson

Thanks to Irascian for the link to Johansson's work.

Saturday 23 May 2009

SMOKY SOUNDS

Amazon kindly wrote to me the other day, saying: "As someone who has purchased or rated Winter Lullabies by Howard Goodall, you might like to know that Yanomami: Music for Choir and Guitar is now available. You can order yours for just £13.69 by following the link below."

I did and was faced with the following - rather disturbing CD cover...


Well if ever there was proof that smoking can damage your health, that is it!

Apart from which, I remain unconvinced that Amazon's similar-product-identifying machine got it quite right on this occasion. The link between Howard Goodall (that nice English composer who wrote the theme music for The Vicar of Dibley) and the Hispanic/Latin American choir, Coro Cevantes, elludes me.

Still, it's intriguing! And might just possibly provide David with a musical accompaniment for a multiple cigarette production routine!

And to inspire him, here's a superb performance which only needs the addition of another four fags to achieve something similar to the illusion demonstrated above.



Tuesday 19 May 2009

OH, BROTHER(S)!

Still on the subject of Disney...

Browsing an auction-site the other day, I spotted my face!

OK, it was very small - minute actually - but there I was on a poster for the 2001 documentary film Walt: The Man Behind the Myth

In truth, I only make the briefest of cameo appearance in the film (talking about the relationship between Walt Disney and Mary Poppins author, P L Travers) compared with such notable names as Dick Van Dyke, Ray Bradbury, Buddy Ebsen, Robert Stack, Dean Jones, Chuck (Bugs Bunny) Jones and a number of legendary Disney animators including Ward Kimball, Marc Davis, Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston.

Anyway, along with the other interviewees (all of whose photos, by the way, somehow got a bit squashed!) here I am on the poster...

Click image to enlarge

"WHERE?"
You ask. OK, penultimate line, three-in from then left after Mary Poppins songwriters, Richard and Robert Sherman. Found me?

Speaking of Dick and Bob Sherman - prolific composers who, between them, wrote the most memorable songs of all our childhoods - I've received the following invitation to a special screening in Hollywood tonight (but obviously I'm not going to be there!) of The Boys: The Sherman Brothers Story - another documentary in which I make a guest appearance...

Click image to enlarge

What is really fascinating about the Sherman's story is not that they wrote standards like 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang', 'I Wanna Be Like You', 'Winnie-the-Pooh', 'The Wonderful Thing About Tiggers', 'A Spoonful of Sugar', 'Feed the Birds', 'Chim-Chim-Cheree' and (let is not forget) 'Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious', but that these men who together created so many memorable musical moments were, most of the time, consumed by sibling rivalry. As the poster has it: Brothers. Partners. Strangers.

Anyway, on this occasion, as you can see (or, rather, can't see) I'm, regrettably, not on the poster! BUT I am in the trailer --- well, not exactly, 'in', but - towards the very end (so, do be patient) you will at least hear my dulcet tones!



And here's the Sherman's most-played song (probably the most played song ever in the history of songdom): the endlessly repeated theme to the 'it's a small world' attraction continuously played (on average) 12 hours a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year in Disneyland, Walt Disney World's The Magic Kingdom, Disneyland Paris, Tokyo Disney Resort and Hong Kong Disneyland. Don't blame me if you're left humming it all day long!



Monday 18 May 2009

DISNEY DREAMSCAPES

I've been poring over a wonderful new book that has whisked me away from the gloom of South London to the sunshine of Orlando, Florida, and that most extraordinary of places (adored by some, reviled by others) Walt Disney World - Disneyland's younger, but bigger, East Coast sister.

The Art of Walt Disney World by Jeff Kurtti and the late Bruce Gordon is, as the title suggests, a celebration of the art that went into creating the Disney theme park experience that is, essentially, an amalgam of architecture, engineering, landscaping and storytelling.

These artworks fulfilled two purposes: firstly as imaginative explorations of ideas and, later, while the Disney dreams and fantasies were being turned into concrete realities, as a way of introducing the public at large to a new Disney product.

The Tree of Life by Ben Tripp, 1992
Disney's Animal Kingdom
Click image to enlarge

Disney's entertainment complex in Florida now comprises four distinct parks as well as various themed recreation areas and an array of hotels, but when I first went there, in January 1982, there was just the one park called 'The Magic Kingdom' but commonly mis-referred to by tourists as 'Disneyland'. The mistake was understandable, since it was, to all intents and purposes a bigger and more elaborate version of the famous Anaheim original which Disney had opened in 1955.

Main Street Town Square with City Hall by Colin Campbell, 1968
The Magic Kingdom

Click image to enlarge

Before visiting a Disney park I admit to having had a somewhat cynical, disparaging (and possibly British) view of this part of the studio's enterprises, but - in the words of Goldsmith - I went to scoff and remained to pray.

The completeness of the creation is remarkable - nothing looks as if it had just been built, but rather as if it had always existed. I remember when Disney opened it's Paris version of Disneyland, I had a heated argument with a French journalist who dismissed the park as being made of cardboard and plastic! Nothing could be further from the truth. You don't have to like the theme park experience, but you can't dismiss it as if it were some gimcrack gewgaw thrown up overnight like a carnival midway.

There is an astonishing attention to detailing in everything - from the decor and dressing of buildings down to litter bins and door furnishings - that is staggering. Pointing out an architectural feature on the top of a building in Disneyland, a journalist once asked Walt Disney "Why bother with all those details that hardly anyone will ever look up high enough to notice?" Disney replied: "Because if they weren't there, people would notice."

The Disney parks are a 3D equivalent of the Disney films in which you have stepped into the screen and where your eye, as the visitor, becomes the camera.

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
Design for attraction poster - artist/date unknown
Click image to enlarge

What took me to Florida back in 1982 was the unveiling of long-awaited plans for the launch of EPCOT (Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow), a futuristic Utopian concept that Walt Disney had begun talking about a few months before his death in 1966 but which had never got beyond the visionary stage and which had severely challenged and perplexed his successors.

Whereas Disney had clearly envisaged - however unfeasible it might have been - a real functioning city, the EPCOT that eventually began to be built was, instead, another theme park albeit one addressing aspects of history, culture, science and technology.

I well remember the first piece of artwork that I saw representing the concept of EPCOT...


 Spaceship Earth by Herbert Ryman, 1977
EPCOT - Future World
Click image to enlarge

'God rays' streaming from a golden sky dramatically illuminate the Geosphere, Spaceship Earth, that would become EPCOT's iconic image in the same way that Cinderella's Castle in The Magic Kingdom had become the signature image representing Walt Disney World when it first opened in 1971.

Within a few days of arriving, I was talking to the folks at Disney about the possibility of making a BBC TV documentary about EPCOT and was being taken round the sprawling building site and meeting the planners and builders who were engaged in this vast project - digging lagoons, constructing (among many other things) a Chinese temple, a Parisian boulevard, a Canadian chateau and, true to stereotype, a British pub! In addition there were pavilions dedicated to themes of transport, energy, the land and - as yet in the future - the seas...

The Living Seas Pavilion by Tony Baxter, 1975
EPCOT - Future World
Click image to enlarge

Having studied and written about Disney movies for many years, I was well aware that every animated feature - and, indeed, many of the studio's live-action films - began with story sketches and inspirational artwork that would set the style, tone and look of the film.

I soon discovered that the various locations, settings and attractions in the theme park had begun in a similar way - not, as one might suppose, with architectural blueprints but with pencil and pastel sketches and watercolour and oil paintings by artists, several of whom had been involved with Disney's animation for many years but who had moved from Burbank to Glendale to work for what, at the time, was called WED [for Walter Elias Disney] Imagineering.

Among these 'Imagineers' (a Disney word combining imagination and engineering) were artists like Marc Davis who, as one of Disney's legendary 'Nine Old Men', animated on many of the Disney classics from Bambi onwards and who created much of the look for the celebrated 'Pirates of the Caribbean' attraction - including these skeletons forever contemplating the checkmate on their chessboard...

'Perpetual Check' by Marc Davis, 1977The Pirates of the Caribbean - The Magic Kingdom
Click image to enlarge

Marc Davis also contributed to the look of many other attractions in both Disneyland and Walt Disney World including the Magic Kingdom's Rivers of America...

Rivers of America Show Scene by Marc Davis, 1970
The Magic Kingdom

Click image to enlarge

Mary Blair had styled a raft of Disney feature films including Song of the South, Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan and then went on to design the New York World's Fair/Disneyland boat ride 'It's A Small World'...

'it's a small world' final scene by Mary Blair, 1970
The Magic Kingdom

Click image to enlarge

...as well as creating a huge mosaic for the Grand Canyon Concourse in Walt Disney World's then state-of-the-art A-frame Contemporary Hotel...

Grand Canyon Concourse Mural detail by Mary Blair, 1969
The Contemporary Hotel

Click image to enlarge

One of the most prolific of these artists was Herbert D Ryman who had begun his career at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, working on such classics as David Copperfield and Mutiny on the Bounty. He later worked on Ana and the King of Siam for 20th Century Fox and, in 1938, joined the creative team at Walt Disney Studios where he worked on films including Dumbo and Fantasia.

It was Herb (or Herbie) who created that evocative painting of the Geosphere shown earlier and, years earlier, had come up with the first 'overlook' for Disneyland and an impression of the central Sleeping Beauty's Castle (shown below but not from this book) which Walt used to sell his ideas to backers and sponsors...

Click image to enlarge


I had the privilege of spending time in Mr Ryman's company, talking about Disney and design and I still find his work endlessly intriguing: the powerfully evocative - yet almost illusory - way in which he painted dreamlike visions such as Walt Disney World's Castle with its turrets and towering spires long before the foundations were even laid - complete, please note, with Cinderella's royal coach, horses and attendants...

Cinderella Castle by Herbert Ryman, 1969
The Magic Kingdom

Click image to enlarge

...or his warmly nostalgic evocation of a long-past age of Americana with a period-costumed population (no tourists in Bermuda shorts and baseball caps here!) including a resident Town Crier...

Concord Bridge, Liberty Square by Herbert Ryman, 1968
The Magic Kingdom

Click image to enlarge

Sometimes Herb Ryman's impressions of places - such as the Equatorial African Pavilion planned for EPCOT's World Showcase but never built - are all that remain of the original dream...

Equatorial Africa Pavilion by Herbert Ryman, 1980
EPCOT - World Showcase
Click image to enlarge
Talking of unrealised dreams, when I was working on my TV documentary, I got to know two of Disney's leading 'Imagineers', Marty Sklar and the late John Hench and following on from a suggestion that I made for a future attraction for the British Pavilion in World Showcase, I was asked to write a treatment for a 'Charles Dickens Ride' that would take visitors (in cars styled like Victorian mail coaches) through a series of tableaux featuring well-known scenes and characters from Dickens' novels: Miss Havisham's Wedding breakfast, Oliver in Fagin's den, Mr Pickwick on the ice in Dingley Dell, Nicholas Nickleby in Dotheboys Hall and, of course, Ebenezer Scrooge and his various spirits...

The project was never seen through to completion, but, as I discovered in The Art of Walt Disney World, various visual interpretations of the idea were made including this scene of Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Past by Sam McKim...

"Are you the spirit, sir, whose coming was foretold to me?"
by Sam McKim, 1984
EPCOT - World Showcase
Click image to enlarge

What fun it would have been to have ridden one's own ride in a Disney theme park! On the night that EPCOT opened, I rode Spaceship Earth with the originator of that ride, Ray Bradbury, giving me an unforgettable personal commentary on the history of human culture from the cave to space exploration. I should dearly have liked to have been able to repay the compliment and take Ray on a tour of my Dickensland!

This is one of the pleasures of Kurtti and Gordon's book: for those who know and love this park there are not only insights into how things became the way they are, but how they might have been and - most beguiling of all - how they never were!

Often, when looking at the inspirational art created for the Disney animated classics, I have had a twinge of regret that some elusive quality captured by the artist has somehow, subsequently, been lost in the process of fixing the images onto film. The same is quite often true of the art of the theme parks, but fortunately, in this handsome volume, much of it is preserved for posterity and for our immediate delight.

Cinderella Mosaic Designs by Dorothea Redmond, 1970-71
The Magic Kingdom
Click image to enlarge

Here are few links where you can read more about Herbert Ryman, Mary Blair, Marc Davis and Sam McKim.

The Art of Walt Disney World is only available at WDW shops or on-line through the Laughing Place Store.


Sunday 17 May 2009

RETURN TO NARNIA

Whatever the truth about The Narnia Code, the stories will lose nothing of their appeal and - like the four Pevensie children in the books - we will always want to go back there.

I wrote recently about artist Andrew Skilleter and his dramatic interpretations of C S Lewis' seven 'Chronicles of Narnia' originally made for the audio cassettes cases of my BBC adaptations and which are currently being exhibited as part of The Wonder of Illustration at the Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum, The King's House, Wiltshire, until Saturday 4 July.

If you enjoyed Andrew's visualisations of Aslan's world, you may care to visit his new website where he gives 'The Artist's Perspective' on the project and where he is offering for sale a beautifully produced limited edition of Fine Art Lifetime Giclee Prints of each of the original artworks.

Remember (to paraphrase Aslan):"Once a friend of Narnia, always a friend of Narnia!"

RE-BREAKING THE CODE

If you missed the BBC documentary, The Narnia Code about C S Lewis and the alleged secret code hidden within his septet of children's novels, 'The Chronicles of Narnia' you've got another chance to catch it tomorrow.

The programme (in which I appeared as a contributor) proved so popular on its first transmission - 15% audience share or 1.9million viewers which is more than a million more viewers than the next most popular programme in that time slot - that it has been scheduled for a repeat on BBC FOUR tomorrow (Monday) evening at 19:30.

So, have the BBC got the message yet? SIBLEY = RATINGS! I bet they haven't!

And, after watching last night's TV marathon (or, at least, the final nine hours of it!), I've come up with a new prime-time unreality programme format: Has Andrew Lloyd Webber Got Talent?


CORRECTION: Oops! Obviously, the title of that programme should have read: Has Andrew Lloyd Webber Got Talent!

Friday 15 May 2009

YOU MIGHT VERY WELL THINK...

It's two years ago, today, since I attended the memorial service for Ian Richardson which makes it a good day to announce the forthcoming publication of a wonderfully engaging tribute to the life and work of this brilliantly talented and superbly entertaining actor.

For millions of TV viewers, Ian Richardson was - and forever remains - Francis Urquhart (or, appropriately, 'FU') the Machiavellian politician in Andrew Davies' TV serializations of Michael Dobbs' trilogy of novels, House of Cards, To Play the King and The Final Cut.

Davies' teleplays gave Urquhart the catchphrase by which the character would be famous: "You might very well think that; I couldn't possibly comment." And part of the genius of Richardson's performance was his delivery of those theatrical asides, so daring in television, tossed out directly to the audience who consequently become Urquhart's confidants or, more precisely, unwitting accomplices in his infamy.



It is altogether appropriate, therefore, that my friend (and frequent commenter on this blog) Sharon Mail should have entitled her book: We Could Possibly Comment - Ian Richardson Remembered...


Before the Urquhart years, Ian Richardson had spent a decade-and-a-half with the Royal Shakespeare Company where his performances in Cymbeline, Macbeth, Richard II, The Merry Wives of Windsor and A Midsummer Night's Dream earned him recognition as one of the great classical actors of his age.

Then came a career in television: starring in dramas such as Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Private Schulz, Porterhouse Blue and Gormenghast as well as playing Sherlock Holmes (in The Sign of Four and The Hound of the Baskervilles) and the man credited with being the inspiration for that character, Dr Joseph Bell, in Murder Rooms.

A wealth of anecdotes recount how Ian Richardson became the first actor to appear naked on the Broadway stage, met with Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi shortly before her assassination (and gained an insight into her father's relationship with Lady Mountbatten), was almost ‘throttled’ by Johnny Depp and happened to bump into the spy, Kim Philby, while shopping for caviar in Moscow.

Drawing on a lengthy, previously unpublished, interview with Richardson and the reminiscences of more than fifty colleagues, friends and admirers, Sharon Mail's book paints a portrait of an actor who was not simply admired and respected as a consummate, highly gifted performer, but who was also deeply loved and revered as the most generous-hearted of men.

Contributors to We Could Possibly Comment include Sirs Ian McKellen and Peter Hall, Dames Judi Dench and Helen Mirren, Patrick Stewart, John Sessions, Stacy Keach, Joanne Woodward, Brian Blessed and many other actors, writers, producers and directors with whom Richardson worked in his prolific career that ranged from the greatest roles written by the Bard to musical performances as Professor Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady and as the Padre alongside Peter O'Toole and Sophia Loren (and, here, between Julie Gregg and Rosalie Crutchley) in the film of Man of La Mancha...



There is even a contribution from Yours Truly remembering the first and last occasion on which I worked with this wonderfully talented performer on what was to be one of his final jobs before his death: a radio reading of my book, Shadowlands.

You can order a copy of the book here.

And here's a final reminder of the extent to which Francis Urquhart and Ian Richardson became part of the great British Public Conciousness...



Thursday 14 May 2009

'ELL FOR LEATHER

In and OUT! Talk about fast!

Actually, at the last minute, my surgeon - Mr Leather - decided not to go ahead with my hernia operation due to the fact that the drugs I am on include ones that are immunosuppressants which make me liable to infection. "What you've got, there," said Mr L, "is a very vulnerable groin!" As medical chat-up lines go that's got to be one of the best.

Obviously the problem has not gone away and I'm to be reassessed in a few months to see whether the operation can be performed using keyhole instead of open surgery.

Meanwhile, thanks for your concern and best wishes which I'll keep carefully in a drawer for the next time...

HORSING AROUND

The other day I was writing about images of creepy kids, today I want to rejoice in the work of one of the most engaging child artists of the twentieth century...

His full name was Norman Thelwell, although he kept that moniker for signing his landscape paintings and only used his stylised surname signature on his cartoons. And it was those cartoons that brought him fame and fortune - particularly the hundreds that featured youngsters ernestly engaged in equestrian pursuits.

Thelwell gave us a legion of plump little girls (and one or two boys) in jodhpurs, hacking jackets and riding hats sitting astride equally plump little ponies with shaggy manes and a lot of attitude and they made him a much-loved national institution.

Essentially, Thelwell’s ponies are short, fat haystacks that are often so hairy that it’s not always easy to tell which way they’re facing! And whilst their riders invariably have sweetly cherubic features, they conceal an iron will that would be the envy of the most determined bronco buster to ever ride the range.


TALK TO YOUR PONY - HE WILL KNOW WHAT YOU MEAN
Click on image to enlarge

But as an exhibition, The Definitive Thelwell, which opened yesterday at Chris Beetles gallery in London demonstrates, Thelwel's artistry was far broader than the popularity of those broad-beamed lasses and their mounts might suggest.

In fact, his cartoons - always impeccably drawn and invariably placing cartoonish characters in highly-naturalistic settings (Thelwell was an accomplished painter of seas and landscapes) - embraced pretty much all the fancies and foibles of the British people: their passion for the Great Outdoors...

DON'T GET TOO FAR AHEAD
Click on image to enlarge


Their stoically acceptance of the rigidity of the class system...

HE'S ASKED FOR POLITICAL ASYLUM


And their undying enthusiasm for sport...


MY GOD, ARTHUR, WE'RE NEVER GOING TO MAKE IT
Click on image to enlarge


All of these topics were represented through several decades of Thelwell cartoons in publications ranging from '50s pocket mags like Men Only and Lilliput via The Sunday Express and the Eagle comic to the pages of that most hallowed of humorous publications the late, lamented Punch for whom he drew over 1500 cartoons and some 60 cover illustrations.

At a time when the popular style adopted by cartoonists was for the swift and sketchy, Thelwell consistently created impeccably crafted works of art. Even without the invariably witty captions, his pictures were miniature masterpieces.


Many of Thelwell's cartoons lived on, beyond the ephemeral life of newspaper and magazine, as a series of books that became obligatory reading matter in the nation’s smallest rooms and included such titles as Thelwell Country, This Desirable Plot, Thelwell's Brat Race, Three Sheets in the Wind and The Complete Tangler, the cover art for which is on show (and for sale) in the exhibition.


There were also books of cartoons about cats and dogs and, obviously ponies who, along with their owners, were celebrated in Angels on Horseback – and elsewhere, Thelwell's Riding Academy and A Leg at Each Corner...


As I comment in an article I've just written about the exhibition for The Lady:

Look at any one of the pony pictures and you see Thelwell’s genius at observing and capturing personality as well his skill at depicting movement...

THAT'S ONE CHRISTMAS PRESENT SHE WON'T BREAK IN A HURRY
Click image to enlarge


...a pony leaping off the ground, snorting with temperament, hooves kicking up clods of earth while the rider, tossed into the air, resolutely clings onto the reins for grim death. One simply has to smile.

The sense of movement and dynamism in his pictures is key and in dozens of drawings - whether of animals or people - they are captured in mid-action and, often, mid-air!


When comes to Thelwell's equestrian pictures what is rather surprising is that he only ever once sat astride a horse and wan’t too keen on creatures that he referred to as "great windy things that'll grab your coat off your back as soon as look at you."

Thelwell died in 2004 at the age of 80 after a long and debilitating struggle with Alzheimer's Disease that left him unable to recognise the famous signature appended to so many wonderful cartoons.

There is no doubting the enduring appeal of the pony cartoons that brought him fame and which many will see as his lasting legacy, but as this new exhibition - and the excellent accompanying catalogue - demonstrates, he was an artist of consistent brilliance both as a draughtsman and as comic genius.


The Definitive Thelwell remains on show until 13 June at Chris Beetles Ltd, 8 & 10 Ryder Street, St James's, London, SW1Y 6QB (Opening Hours: 10:00 - 17:30 Monday - Saturday) Telephone: 020 7839 7551

You can read my article about Thelwell in The Lady, here.

And you can discover more about the life and work of this much-loved artist on his official website.

Click on image to enlarge

All images: © the Estate of Norman Thelwell