The exhibition title is a little misleading. It led me to believe the show would be about a range of old-style illustrators who’d all tried their hands at illustrating Peter Pan. In fact it is a small but beautifully formed exhibition devoted to the work of just two notable but very different Edwardian women book illustrators.
Alice Bolingbroke Woodward (1862 to 1951)
Alice Woodward was one of the seven children of Dr Henry Woodward, a geologist at the British Museum. From an early age she (and her three sisters) wanted to be artists and her parents were affluent enough to fund her training at the Westminster School of Art and at the South Kensington School of Art, before she went to spend three months at art school in Paris.
In other words, Alice received a lot of training and study, especially in life drawing. In 1895 she began her career as a commercial illustrator, and in 1897, was established enough to replace Aubrey Beardsley as illustrator of a magazine series titled Bons Mots of the Eighteenth Century. Between 1896 and 1900 she illustrated a series of children’s books.
In 1904 J.M. Barrie’s play Peter Pan debuted in London and was wildly popular. A publisher, G. Bell and Sons, had the idea of recycling the characters from the play into a large format, illustrated Peter Pan Picture Book (text by Daniel O’Connor) and asked Woodward to do the illustrations.
Woodward was thus the first illustrator to illustrate the Peter Pan stories, creating 28 coloured plates for the Picture Book which went on to become an international bestseller.
Illustration from The Peter Pan Picture Book (1907) by Alice B. Woodward
For the next thirty years Woodward worked for Bell, illustrating a wide variety of children’s stories, including a new edition of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
The half of the exhibition devoted to Woodward presents 19 of the original watercolour drawings from her Peter Pan as well as seven watercolours from Alice, with two display cases showing ten or so original editions of other books for which she drew covers, end-papers and illustrations.
Illustration from Alice in Wonderland by Alice B. Woodward (1913)
To be honest, I wasn’t completely convinced. There’s a certain weakness about her faces. This is more obvious in the Alice illustrations than the Pan ones. The Alice pictures suffer by comparison with either the original illustrations by John Tenniel, or the version done a little earlier by Arthur Rackham in 1907.
On the evidence here Woodward is at her best with Peter Pan – such as in the beautiful image of Mrs Darling bending over one of her small children in his bed, or in more active scenes like the big crocodile waddling after Captain Hook or of Peter Pan fighting the captain (see below).
Illustration from The Peter Pan Picture Book (1907) by Alice B. Woodward
Edith Farmiloe (1870 to 1921)
Edith was born Edith Parnell, the second of ten children (ten!). In stark contrast to the opportunities given Alice Woodward, Edith had little or no formal art training.
In 1891 she married Thomas Farmiloe who was vicar of St Peter’s church in Great Windmill Street, Soho. It was a very deprived area in the 1890s and Edith started writing stories about the children of the poor who thronged the streets. It was only a small step to start illustrating them herself. Lacking Woodward’s training in life drawing, shading and depth, Edith developed a style based on clear black outlines.
Edith’s earliest pictures were picked up by children’s magazines and then, in 1897, she was asked by the publisher Grant Richards to illustrate a large picture book titled All The World Over, with each page devoted to (rather stereotypical) depictions of children around the world, from Eskimos to Australians, alongside verses about them written by the freelance writer E.V. Lucas.
Greenland: Waiting for the sledge, illustration for All The World Over by Edith Farmiloe (1898)
In 1898 Grant Richards requested a follow-up book and suggested the subject be the children of London. It was titled Rag, Tag and Bobtail (1898). Although aimed at children, the pictures are notable for some occasionally unflinching depictions of the real poverty of of London’s most deprived children. The exhibition brings this out by displaying next to the Farmiloe pictures, contemporary photos of children’s street activities.
Photos from Some London Amusements published in Living London by George R. Sims, Cassel and Co (1901)
This was followed by another picture book, Picallilli, in 1900, the same landscape format but this time Edith wrote the text as well. The first 15 of the 30 colour plates depict the Italian immigrant community in London, hence the title.
Out from School, illustration for Rag, Tag and Bobtail (1899) by Edith Farmiloe
In 1902 Edith illustrated a picture book, Young George – His Life, for a new publisher, William Heinemann. Unlike the previous three, this picturebook was in portrait format and explicitly depicted the lives of London’s street children. The family in question has no father, so George is in charge of all his younger siblings. The children have to fend for themselves, and feed themselves from the street, since their mother locks them out of the house every morning when she goes off to work.
London (East) the Diamond Jubilee by Edith Farmiloe
Compare and contrast
It is really interesting not only to a) learn about two illustrators I’d never heard of but b) to be able to compare and contrast two such very different styles of illustration.
Woodward is interested in depth of perspective and richness of colour. The polish and ambition of her technique is exemplified in the visual complexity of an illustration like this.
Mermaid Combing Her Hair by Alice B. Woodward, illustration from The Peter Pan Picture Book
Some of her illustrations I would like to own, but many are marred by a kind of infelicity of composition, especially in her inability to draw faces really accurately. I think she aims ambitiously high, and sometimes gets there with sumptuously luxurious pictures… but not all the time.
By contrast, Farmiloe was from the start a far more stylised illustrator, making the most of her lack of formal training by concentrating on strong outlines and simplified figures.
I found Edith’s pictures easier to assimilate and more entertaining to look at. They are winning. Her children may be cartoon-like (the friend I went with said some reminded him of the Peanuts cartoon by Charles M. Schulz) but they immediately evoke a strong visual response, in a way the Woodward pictures don’t – for me, anyway.
And also the stories, texts, ideas and inspiration for Farmiloe’s illustrations are new and inventive. Woodward is illustrating stories we already know and love; there’s a strong sense of familiarity, even of déjà vu in some of her pictures, and she suffers a bit in the inevitable comparison with the famous illustrators who had gone before her (in the case of Alice, at any rate) or with other illustrators of these classic works who came afterwards.
In contrast to the crowded field Woodward was working in, Farmiloe creates a new visual language for entirely new stories, situations and poems, and so has the benefit of freshness.
This explains why there are more wall labels about Farmiloe than about Woodward in the exhibition – because each of her book projects needs to be explained in a way that Peter Pan or Alice don’t. And these explanations – especially concerning London street children and poverty – are often as interesting and absorbing as the pictures themselves.
For example, one of the picture books on display is open at the wonderful children’s poem A Make-Believe Margate. This is based on the bitter-sweet idea that even in the poorest slums, inner city children play a game of pretending they’re by the seaside.
The Jinks ‘ave gone to Margit.
Oh! They spends their money free!
From Saturday to Monday
They’ll eat their s’rimps for supper
An’ they’ll sniff the salt-sea spray,
As they swagger down the Jetty
When the band begins to play.
The Jinks ‘ave gone to Margit.
But we doesn’t care – oh no!
Though we felt a little chokey
As we stud and watched ’em go.
And Ameliar started cryin’,
But young ‘Enery, sez ‘e
‘I tell you what, you kiddies,
Let’s purtend we’re by the sea.’
So we all began purtendin’.
Oh it was a bit o’ fun!
An’our court looked jest like Margit
When the sport was well begun.
There was paddling for the babies
(For we emptied lots o’ pails)
And they looked for shells and lobsters,
Round the dustbin and the rails.
And the Jackson boys were donkeys,
Runnin’ races on the shore,
While our washin’-tub, the Skylark,
Made excursions past the door;
Then the Muggins blacked their faces,
(They was never werry clean)
And you should ‘ave ‘eard ’em bangin’
On their (tea-tray) tambourine!
Yus’, the Jinks ‘ave gone to Margit,
But they needn’t think we mind,
Though they larfed as they were startin’,
When they saw us left be’ind.
If we’re cooped up ‘ere in Hoxton,
Yet we’ll never sigh or groan,
For we’ve got a little sea-side
Of our werry, werry, own!
And here’s Farmiloe’s illustration of the poem.
A Make-Believe Margate by Edith Farmiloe
So it’s not only the illustrations, but the novelty and interest of the ideas behind them – the novelty and cleverness of this poem, for example – and the very idea of depicting slum children with sympathy and humour – all these factors go to make Farmiloe, for me, a more interesting, entertaining and emotionally engaging artist. I admired many of the Woodwards; but I wanted to own many of the Farmiloes.
Go along and decide for yourself!
Related links
- Peter Pan and Other Lost Children continues at the Heath Robinson Museum until 18 November 2018
- Alice Bolingbroke Woodward Wikipedia article
- Edith Farmiloe Royal Academy page
Books & Boots 