The Illustration Family Robinson

Stick with me for a moment. This will all eventually become relevant. I remember when I began studying for my A Levels there was a guy in my class who was actually a year older than the rest of us.  I think that he’d done O Level resits the previous year. I hope that I’m not being unfair when I say that I don’t think that he found A Level English the easiest of subjects. When it come to Art though, the guy was brilliant. To look at his own original work was to die a little inside, with the realisation that you would never be capable of producing original work like that yourself. He was so modest about it as well. I remember him telling me that he was doing a project on artist and illustrator Aubrey Beardlsey. This was my first encounter with the work of the man who would become one of my absolute favourite artist/illustrators. If I could wave my magic wand and have any artist or illustrator from the past produce a set of Alice illustrations it would be Aubrey Beardsley. I think he would have produced something outstanding. Sadly, he died just a few years before the copyright of Wonderland passed into the public domain.

So to the Robinson brothers, then. Once upon a time there were three brothers born in London, Thomas, Charles and William. Only 3 years spanned heir births. I can relate to this myself, since my older brother was born in 1963, I was born in 1964, and our younger brother was born in 1965. Their father and grandfather had both been illustrators and all three brothers had successful careers in illustration, especially during the Golden Age of British illustration. The youngest, William Heath Robinson, is the best remembered today, for his depiction of strange, convoluted and often pointless machines. To this day his name is used as an adjective for this kind of machine, the sort that looks like a mad inventor has knocked it up in their bedroom. William was the only one of the three who did not produce a set of illustrations to the Alice books. Both of the older brothers, Thomas and Charles, did.

The three brothers were active professionally from the 1890s onwards. Beardsley himself passed away in 1898. Did they know each other? Bearing in mind the similarity in their ages – Beardsley was actually slightly younger, and with the similar circles they moved in it seems very likely. Whatever the case the Robinsons’ work seems definitely to have been influenced by Beardsley. A few years ago when the Beardsley Gallery mounted an exhibition ‘The Beardsley Generation’ about Beardsley and his contemporaries who were influenced by him, the Robinsons were represented. Both Thomas Heath (TH) and Charles produced illustrations for Wonderland when the copyright on the book lapsed in 1907. I appreciate both but have a preference for Charles’ work, and I will start with these.

I find Charles Robinson's Alice illustrations a consistently interesting set. Like Mervyn Peake’s they range from the very complex and detailed - the Pool of Tears - to the much simpler - the Mock Turtle. Yet all of Peake's illustrations look like they were made by the same artist. Tenniel’s illustration all look like Tenniel’s work and Ralph Steadman’s illustrations all look like Ralph Steadman’s work. But with Charles Robinson’s, that’s not the case. If you didn't know, I don’t think you would pick out the pool of tears and mock turtle illustrations as having been created by the same hand. 

His illustration of the pool of tears goes beyond the text. His Alice looks almost demonic. The shading is really heavy, and the use of swirls and reflections in the pool make it a real tour de force, and hint at what Beardsley might have done. It’s by far my favourite illustration of Alice in the pool of tears. It’s framed by a relatively ornate Edwardian border. Yet many of his illustrations use very little shading at all. The Mock Turtle illustration for example could easily have been made 60 years later. With the stylisation of the image, the contrast between large areas of negative space and patches of pure black shading and the use of simple geometric shapes, this is another reflection of a different aspect of Beardsley’s work. Speaking of the Mock Turtle I can respect Robinson’s choice to go with something far more closely resembling a real turtle rather than riffing on the Tenniel conception of the character.

If we take these two illustrations as the extremes of a continuum, all of his illustrations of Wonderland fit more closely at one or other ends of the continuum. And you get a lot for your money. There are several colour plates and over 100 black and white illustrations – the majority of which are further towards the Mock Turtle end of the spectrum. This might be why when you view his illustrations today, almost 120 years after he made them, a huge number of them still look fresh and fun. To this extent Helen Oxenbury’s work on the story reminds me of Charles Robinson’s. Their styles are quite different, yet there is the same clean and uncluttered sense of fun and freshness. So while I might not quite put Charles Robinson right at the top of the tree of Alice illustrators with Peake and Tenniel, I’d put him pretty close. He’s a very significant Alice illustrator. I don’t think that he ever illustrated Alice Through the Looking Glass. That’s a shame. I’d love to have seen what he would have made of the Jabberwock.

Now, I said that I prefer Charles’ work to that of TH. However, the set of illustrations that TH produced in the same magic year of 1907 are still a fine set and well worthy of your attention. The set that TH produced is a far more homogenous set than Charles’. They were all clearly drawn by the same hand and they clearly all belong to he same work. Which makes it all the more strange that they were combined in the same edition with colour plates by Charles Pears. It looks as if neither artist had seen what the other produced. Their styles are completely different and so is their conception of the characters. But let’s concentrate on the work of TH. With their heavy borders TH’s illustrations almost have something of the quality of medieval woodcut engravings. Each illustration illustrates a whole scene and gives us full backgrounds and foregrounds within a plain, thick rectangular border.

I won’t lie, I have tremendously enjoyed copying TH’s work. Of his more memorable illustrations there’s the turbaned caterpillar and especially the elongated Alice being berated by the pigeon. The use of forced perspective with Alice’s head is something special and is probably my favourite illustration of his scene. But otherwise I don’t include TH in the absolute top branches of the tree because he does often play it safe in his depiction of the scenes. Yes, his Mad Hatter is dark and doesn’t have a 10/6 ticket in his hat. (Charles’ Pears’ does – shame on you Charles.) But it’s still a top hat and he still has a very prominent beaky nose. I like TH’s illustration of Alice with the Gryphon and Mock Turtle, but putting a top hat on the Mock Turtle does nothing to hide the fact that this is still very much Tenniel’s concept of the character. Likewise, while his Alice wears a sailor dress rather than a pinafore dress she is still recognisably a pretty direct descendant of Tenniel’s Alice.

I don’t want to keep harking back to comparisons with his brother Charles’ work but it’s very hard to avoid. If you compare the way that Charles illustrated Alice in the Pool of Tears with TH’s illustration of the scene, they both use swirls of water, but to me TH’s while technically accomplished just doesn’t portray or evoke the same level of emotion. TH’s Alice has an expression just seems to say – oh well, here we are, then, swimming in a pool of my own tears with a mouse. Another day at the office. - While many of Charles’ illustrations look fresh and timeless, all of TH’s illustrations seem to be very much of their time, the Edwardian era.

As I said earlier, I really do enjoy copying TH’s work even though they are not my favourite illustrations of Wonderland and here are two more I’ve just finished.

Other Alice's - What Tenniel didn't sketch, and Caterpillars

I can’t help thinking that once the copyright ran out on the Alice books and they could be illustrated by other artists from 1907, being engaged to illustrate the book might well have been something of a thankless task. After all, you’re always going to be compared to Tenniel, probably unfavourably. You either do something which looks like it’s been influenced by Tenniel, or you try to do something completely different, which risks alienating those for whom Tenniel is the gold standard.

Of course, one thing you could do is to illustrate episodes from the books that Tenniel didn’t use. The first and one of the most obvious is Alice falling down the rabbit hole.

Tenniel’s frontispiece shows the courtroom with the king and queen of Hearts, the first illustration as such is the white rabbit, and then the next shows Alice peeping behind a curtain after she has finished falling. I don’t know why he didn’t illustrate her falling, but then he produced forty two illustrations as it was. Maybe it was not required by Lewis Carroll. He was actually the first person to illustrate the story. He first wrote it in longhand, complete with his own illustrations. When you see them you do understand why friends advised him to get a professional illustrator when having the book published. Quite a few of Tenniel’s illustrations do follow the episodes that Carroll illustrated, and Carroll himself did not draw Alice falling down the rabbit hole. Still, whatever the reason why Tenniel didn’t illustrate this episode, Well at least it gave later illustrators an opportunity. This is my copy of Harry Furniss’ illustration of the scene.

Harry Furniss did work with both John Tenniel and Lewis Carroll. He began working for Punch in 1880, wat which time Tenniel was the chief cartoonist. Furniss was commissioned by Carroll to illustrate his two Sylvie and Bruno books, neither of which is much read today. Tenniel reputedly said that Furniss would find it an unpleasant experience working with Carroll, and this seems to have been the case. So the story goes Furniss would pretend to be out whenever Carroll came to look at his work, and he vowed never to work with Carroll again.

Carroll passed away in 1898. Several editions appeared in America in the 1890s and early 1900s. but when the copyright expired in 1907 a huge number of editions appeared with the work of other illustrators. Harry Furniss’ illustrations appeared in 1908 in Arthur Mee’s Children’s Encyclopaedia.

I think that if you look at my copy you might well see that Harry Furniss’ work does bear some similarities with Tenniel’s. I’m particularly thinking about the heavy shading with hatching and cross hatching. Tenniel’s illustrations do often look like beautifully posed and staged tableaux, while Furniss’ do seem to have more movement and spontaneity. Furniss’ Alice is brunette, and looks rather older than Tenniel’s.

By way of comparison I’ve copied Ralph Steadman’s illustration of Alice falling from his 1967 illustrated edition. By contrast this is quite a minimalist illustration, with a couple of bookshelves, a map, a picture and a jar doing all the work to show this is a rabbit hole. But the position Alice is in, with her ridiculously long, thin limbs perfectly captures the feeling of falling. I’ve copied several of Ralph Steadman’s illustrations before. As I have said, they’re marmite for me. I either absolutely love them, or I have a strong reaction against them.

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Another scene which Tenniel did not illustrate but many later illustrators did is Alice being called a serpent by a pigeon when her head has stretched up into the sky. Again, it is an episode with plenty of scope for visual representation. In this case Lewis Carroll did illustrate the episode. He actually made two sketches, one showing Alice with normal sized head but impossibly long, straight neck shooting out above the tree tops, the other showing her with long, curving neck being harangued by the pigeon.

Last year I copied my favourite rendition of Alice being accosted by the pigeon, which was made in 1907 by T.H. Robinson. I love the way he captures the foreshortening effect of looking down on Alice’s body from being roughly eye level with her head. Her neck is elongated, but nothing like as much as is often the case when illustrators tackle this episode. Robinson was the brother of the much more famous William Heath Robinson, and Charles Robinson who also illustrated Alice in Wonderland I 1907, several of whose illustrations I’ve copied in the past.

Compare this with my copy of Steadman’s 1967 illustration. This may sound like a strange thing to say, but this is far more similar to Lewis Carroll’s original illustration than Robinson’s is. Steadman's Alice is very different to Carroll’s dark haired Alice, but both head and bird are in similar positions, and the neck curves in similar fashion. I think that the pigeon is a real tour de force.

This next rendition is my copy of a Harry Rountree illustration. Harry Rountree was a New Zealand born illustrator and cartoonist who was successful in New Zealand before moving to London in 1901. During his career he worked for many publications, including Punch.Rountree actually illustrated Wonderland twice, first in 1908 and then 20 years later in 1928. Judging by Alice’s hairstyle I’d say that this is more likely the 1928 version. In this one Rountree opted to emphasize the serpentine nature of Alice’s neck, and he’s by no means the only illustrator to do this. Again, I think that the pigeon is very well rendered, and indeed living creatures were something of a speciality for Harry Rountree. 

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You know, I’ve always had a sneaking fondness for the caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland. This mark you even though Tenniel’s illustration of the caterpillar is one of his less effective in my opinion. I mean, it’s certainly clever the way that the two top pairs of legs do actually look like a face – possibly the face of Mr. Punch – but I’d love to have seen just how he would have rendered the caterpillar’s face head on.

Last year I made a copy of Arthur Rackham’s illustration of the caterpillar, which is one of my favourites. Arthur Rackham was a leading light during what has been called the golden age of British illustration from the 1890s until the First World War. His illustrations for the book were a mixture of colour plates, like the one I’ve copied here, and black and white line drawings. Rackham shows the caterpillar’s face properly, and so what we get, a caterpillar’s body bearing a rather wizened, bespectacled and almost human head is pretty much the norm for illustrators of Alice. If you look at this, by Harry Rountree, you can probably see what I mean. 

Rountree doesn’t put Alice in the picture, which is more unusual, but he does give us a traditional hookah and mushroom.

Harry Furniss rendered it like this. He differs from Tenniel in as much as the mushroom is smaller and Alice can clearly see the caterpillar. You can also see how Furniss’ Alice is older and more mature than Tenniel’s. His caterpillar is slightly less human, having what appears to be a beak, although like Rountree he does go along with the convention of giving the caterpillar one pair of arms with very human hands on the end, and feet only at the end of his body.

One of the earlier renditions of the caterpillar is this one I copied which was by Charles Robinson. In terms of composition this is like a mirror image of Tenniel’s. With Alice peering over the mushroom on the left rather than the right, and the caterpillar on the right rather than the left. It means we don’t really see his face, which is a pity. One thing he does, which Tenniel also did but a lot of later illustrations don’t is to provide the foliage all round the scene.

T.H. Robinson also illustrated the caterpillar, and I copied this last year. Like his brother Charles, and Tenniel TH Robinson did at least illustrate the whole scene, with many mushrooms rather than just the one and this is something original. The caterpillar himself does have a very human face. The features look old and tired, which kind of matches the sleepy languid voice that Lewis Carroll gave him in the text. To be honest though this caterpillar doesn’t really look like a caterpillar at all. His only visible limbs are human arms and legs, he is fully clothed and this is topped off by a stage magician’s turban.

This is the first illustration I’ve copied by one of the best loved of Alice illustrators, Willy Pogany. He illustrated the book in 1929. Pogany was born in Austria-Hungary, and worked all over Europe in the early years of the 20^th century before finally emigrating to the USA. Many of his illustrations for Alice are deceptively simple. In this one we only get the caterpillar, and half the hookah. No mushroom, no Alice, no foliage. His caterpillar, though, is far more of a caterpillar, with distinctly non-human limbs evenly spaced along his body.

I know what you’re asking yourself. What did Ralph Steadman do with the caterpillar? Well, here’s my copy. My guess is that your first reaction when you look at this is that it’s very different from what has gone before. For one thing, the caterpillar is facing away from Alice. For another thing there’s no hookah, he is smoking a cigarette (of some kind) in a cigarette holder. Also he looks totally wired, with his wild unkempt hair and his wide, unmatching eyes. Look at it again, though. We have Alice peering over the top of the mushroom – we’ve seen that before. The caterpillar seems to have a vaguely human arm and hand, and there’s no mistaking that his two legs are very human, clad in pinstripe trousers and what look like sandals. If I’m honest this not actually one of my favourite Steadman illustrations. I just have an issue with the caterpillar looking so wired. The text describes him talking in a languid, sleepy voice.

(Mock) Mock Turtles

 Right, so yesterday evening, after I put the watercolours away, I was watching TV and very often, when I'm watching I'll sketch with a pen at the same time. I thought to myself - what haven't I done with regards to the Alice books yet? Tenniel alone produced getting on for 100 illustrations for the two books altogether. One thing that occurred to me was that I haven't done the mock turtle yet. So I made this copy last night.

It really is the archetypal image of the Mock Turtle, and for me serves as something of a good demonstration of he imaginative genius of Tenniel. Carroll's own drawing of the Mock Turtle for 'Alice's Adventures Underground', the original handmade manuscript that he gave to Alice Liddell, it looks like a seal wearing plate armour. In the description n "Alice in Wonderland"  it says "I don't even know what a Mock Turtle is."

"It's the thing Mock Turtle Soup is made from," said the Queen." Back in the day, green turtle soup was looked on as a delicacy. Thankfully we know better now. Due to the scarcity of turtles - hardly surprising since humans kept making them into soup, mock turtle soup was made of an alternative, using ground beef and offal. Hence Tenniel's decision to give his mock turtle attributes of both cow and turtle. 

This conception of the character has proven difficult for illustrators who came after to get away from. Here's my copy of dear old Arthur Rackham's

Again, it is instantly recognisable as the Mock Turtle, because it is pretty much the same in all the essentials as Tenniel's. Coming forward in time four decades, we have my copy of Mervyn Peake's conception of the character, here dancing around Alice with the gryphon:-

Superficially it's different. Once again Peake uses the strategy of using movement, which does have the effect of making his illustrations look different from Tenniel's. Instead of giving the character 2 turtle flippers and two cow legs, he gives him  human limbs instead. I'd dare say that the head is a sheep's rather than a cow's. Even so, though, the shell and the head are still obeying the Tenniel convention of a creature combining domesticated mammal and turtle attributes.

I don't know if Ralph Steadman drew the Mock Turtle for his Alice in Wonderland, but I haven't been able to find a copy of it if he did. All of which meant that I was beginning to despair of finding an illustration of the character other than Tenniel's which metaphorically blew my socks off. Then I came to Charles Robinson again. This is my copy of his illustration:-

Can you believe that this was made in 1907? Charles Robinson's illustrations for Alice in Wonderland are well worth finding. Some of them are very simple, and look unremarkable. Others, though, are stunning demonstrations of graphic illustration decades ahead of his time. In Robinson's illustration, the mock turtle looks like a real turtle, but what an illustration it is.