Edward Ardizzone CBE, RA
Continuing the series of essays written by my late father, Rowley Atterbury, about the people that he felt had contributed to the graphic arts during his lifetime. Originally written in 1990 and revised and updated in A Good Idea at the Time, a History of Westerham Press published in 2010 by Hurtwood Press.
In 1953 we [Westerham Press] printed Faber’s Christmas card, designed by Edward Ardizzone, and in 1958 we printed the menu for the Double Crown Club 145th Dinner that he designed.
Faber Christmas Card, 1953
Menu for Double Crown Club dinner, 1958
When he returned from Germany in 1945 Edward Ardizzone went back to his family. He spent a month working up his last war drawings, and resigned as an official war artist on 20 June 1945. His ability to make friends had served him well and was never to leave him.
He spent the next two decades illustrating books, painting and exhibiting. He taught first at Camberwell School of Art and Crafts, where Charles Mozley stood in for him when he went to Italy, and later at the Royal College of Art, where many of his wartime friends were working. He pursued his love of lithography but gave this up in 1960 when he found that the skills were being lost with the retirement of lithographic craftsmen printers.
By the 1960s he became an illustrator rather than an artist. He reached the height of his powers as an illustrator and achieved international fame.
Menu for DCC dinner
On 28 June 1956 members of the Double Crown Club were invited as guests to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Ted Ardizzone was one of the principal guests and after a very fine dinner in a palatial gallery in the museum, the walls all covered by Rembrandts, Ted seized a candle and walked around the gallery carefully inspecting each painting and followed by his very nervous hosts. After thoroughly surveying all the paintings he returned to his seat, slowly replaced the candle and after some thought said ‘good magazine illustration’!
Title page of Charles Dickens, Birthday Book, 1948
When planning the Doulton exhibition held at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1979, the designers, Trickett & Webb, had the idea of commissioning drawn backgrounds to the display cases from a range of illustrators. My son Paul [Paul Atterbury] was one of the organisers and suggested Ted Ardizzone be added to the list, mainly because it gave him the chance to meet him. They all had lunch together, and he was persuaded to undertake the work. He did the drawing, designed to be enlarged to fit a specific space and shape at the back of the case. He came to the opening in a wheelchair but died soon after. So, it must have been one of his last commissions. He was a splendid, talented man and a great supporter of fine work.
