THE ILLUSTRATORS. THE BRITISH ART OF ILLUSTRATION 1800-2014

Page 181

11: POST-WAR ILLUSTRATORS

Nos 227-230 are all illustrated in Maurice Gorham, The Local, London: Cassell & Co, 1939

The Local From 1920, Edward Ardizzone lived in Maida Vale at 130 Elgin Avenue, which ‘stood on the divide where respectability descended into seediness’ (Robert Bruce, ‘Ardizzone’s Pubs’, Illustration, Summer 2007, page 10). One of the attractions of the area was the number and range of its public houses, including some magnificent Edwardian edifices. However, Ardizzone was a disciplined artist and, as his daughter, Christianna remembers, ‘He had a midday walk up to the pub for a pint of beer … then back to Elgin Avenue for a breadand-cheese lunch and back at his desk until six’ (quoted in Robert Bruce, op cit, page 11). It was only when Ardizzone regained contact with Maurice Gorham, a childhood friend who had become a journalist, that he began to explore and represent the pubs of Maida Vale, and more widely of London, with any thoroughness. They published The Local in 1939 and Back to the Local a decade later, as the plates and stock of The Local had been destroyed in the Blitz. Ardizzone produced watercolours for the former and reinterpreted them in pen and ink for the latter.

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‘What inspired Maida Vale’s new inhabitant was its range of pubs, which were exceptional for any part of London and from which Ardizzone extracted a world of his own both from their patrons and from their buildings and interiors.’ (Gabriel White, Edward Ardizzone, London: Bodley Head, 1979, page 33)

227 BARMAIDS OLD & NEW inscribed with title below mount watercolour with pen ink and pencil 7 x 5 1⁄2 inches Illustrated: page 7


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THE ILLUSTRATORS. THE BRITISH ART OF ILLUSTRATION 1800-2014 by Chris Beetles - Issuu