Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A watercolourist and illustrator, best known for his detailed, evocative children's book illustrations.
On the island
Eight records
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:08Could you adjust yourself to solitude?
I don't know.
Presenter asks
4:17You were born in China, were you not?
I was born not in China proper. I was born in Haiphong, which was then French territory, Tonkin.
Presenter asks
4:54Was there artistic talent in the family?
Well, my mother was a Miss Irvey… And she studied painting at Colerossis in Paris in eighteen eighty, which was quite an unusual thing for girls to do in that day. And my grandmother was born at sea, and he was a very good amateur watercolourist… And his father was a clergyman, Lawrence Kirby, who was a very well-known amateur painter, and he was the direct descendant of Joshua Kirby, who was Gainsborough's bosom friend and a painter.
Presenter asks
5:43What in fact happened to you when you left school?
What really happened to me is I had to get a job. I had a job in the city in the China and Japan trading company. That went bust, and I got a job in the Eastern Telegraph Company as a statistical clerk.
The keepsakes
The book
Charles Dickens
Pickwick Papers says everything. It has all Dickens in it. Yes. And the Fizz illustrations.
The luxury
Not recorded.
Presenter asks
9:51Is there cooperation between the artist and author? Or does the artist just take the manuscript away and work on it in his own way?
I think you take the right thing… is to take the manuscript away, and then you have to fight about it afterwards. But in fact, I've only once had the author… quarrel with my drawings. Only once in my whole time.
Presenter asks
23:24What are you going to draw with?
Oh, charcoal. Charcoal. Make a fire, make some charcoal.
“I threw up my job, you see, said to hell with this, I'm free. Of course the poor old boy nearly had a fit.”
“By the great good fortune, one of those pieces of luck, one of the art critics of the then new statesman and nation, passed by, looked in, liked them, and really gave me half a page right up.”
“I told them a story out of the blue of Little Tim and the Brave Sea Captain. Then I was damned broke and I said, 'We must make some money.' So I wrote it out and drew it in a big sketchbook and tried to sell it, and thank God it sold. Because it now sells more than it ever did then.”
“I drew Winston, and I drew the front bench. They were all there, and I had Winston standing up and rubbing his tummy, like he always did… and there was old Cruikshank, a whole lot of others, all in that sort of attitude, and the press gallery, when they saw it, were horrified… But when Winston saw it, he thought it was marvellous. He came and shook my hand afterwards. He said, 'I like your painting, but I don't think Anthony will.'”