Cecil Charles Windsor Aldin (28 April 1870 – 6 January 1935) was a British artist and illustrator best known for his paintings and sketches of animals, sports, and rural life.
Contents |
Born in Slough, he was educated at Eastbourne College and Solihull Grammar School. He studied anatomy at South Kensington, and animal painting under William Frank Calderon. He lived at The Abbots, Sulhamstead Abbots from 1913 to 1914 and was church warden of St Mary's, the local church.[1]
Early influences included Randolph Caldecott and John Leech. His drawings first made their way into print in "The Building News" of 12 September 1890, and began to appear throughout many popular journals and magazines; his work was published in "The Graphic" in 1891.[2]
His illustrations include two of the original 1894 magazine publications of stories from Rudyard Kipling's The Second Jungle Book, the 1910 edition of Charles Dickens' The Pickwick Papers and The Bunch Book (1932, about Bunch, a Sealyham Terrier) by James Douglas. He also published a short series of fully illustrated books in 1923, Old Manor Houses and Old Inns.
His village scenes and rural buildings were executed in chalk, pencil and wash sketching was used for country scenes. Aldin was an enthusiastic sportsman and a fox hunting "Master of Hounds" and many of his pictures illustrated 'the chase'.[2]
An early work on a tiger resident at a Zoo was studied from life, but found to be a copyright of the ideas in a photograph by Gambier Bolton.[2]
A popular book by Aldin was Sleeping Partners, a sequence of pastel drawings of his dogs on a couch. It included his Irish Wolfhound Micky and his favourite model, Cracker, a Bull Terrier with a dark patch over one eye.[3]
He also did some work for Cadburys advertising.
Books illustrated by Aldin (selected):
Biographical: