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WILLIAM HE ATH ROBINSON
WIL L IA M H E AT H RO B I N S O N William Heath Robinson (1872-1944) Heath Robinson is a household name, and a byword for a design or construction that is ‘ingeniously or ridiculously over-complicated’ (as de ned by The New Oxford Dictionary of English, 1998, page 848). Yet, he was also a highly distinctive and versatile illustrator, whose work could touch at one extreme the romantic watercolours of a Dulac or Rackham, at another the sinister grotesqueries of a Peake, and at yet another the eccentricities of an Emett. For a biography of William Heath Robinson, please refer to The Illustrators, 2018, page 22. Essays on various aspects of Heath Robinson’s achievements have appeared in previous editions of The Illustrators: on his illustrations to Rabelais in 1996, pages 112-113; on the relationship of his illustrations to those of Arthur Rackham in 1997, pages 124-125; on his illustrations to The Arabian Nights Entertainments in 1999, pages 73-74; and on one of his illustrations to Twelfth Night in 2000, pages 17-18.
The Chris Beetles Gallery has mounted a number of signi cant exhibitions of the work of William Heath Robinson, including: 1. ‘William Heath Robinson (1872-1944)’, Chris Beetles Gallery, March 1987 (with a fully illustrated catalogue) 2. ‘The Brothers Robinson’, Chris Beetles Gallery and the Royal Festival Hall, February 1992 (with a fully illustrated catalogue – see catalogue image) 3. ‘William Heath Robinson (1872-1944). 50th Anniversary Exhibition’, Chris Beetles Gallery, September 1994 4. ‘The Gadget King’, Manchester City Art Galleries, Heaton Hall, May-October 2000 5. ‘W Heath Robinson’, Dulwich Picture Gallery, Linbury Room, November 2003 (to complement Dulwich’s own exhibition of William Heath Robinson) 6. ‘Heath Robinson at Nunnington Hall’, National Trust, Nunnington Hall, North Yorkshire, July 2005 7. ‘Contraptions. William Heath Robinson (1872-1944)’, Chris Beetles Gallery, June-August 2007 (to launch a volume of cartoons published by Duckworth) 8. ‘William Heath Robinson 1872-1944’, Chris Beetles Gallery, May-June 2011 (with a fully illustrated catalogue– see catalogue image) 9. ‘The Inventive Art of William Heath Robinson’, Chris Beetles Gallery, March-April 2016
Geo rey Beare, The Brothers Robinson, London: Chris Beetles Ltd, 1992 Fully illustrated catalogue, hardback, limited to 500 copies, 240 pages
Geo rey Beare, William Heath Robinson, London: Chris Beetles, 2011 Fully illustrated catalogue, paperback, 163 pages