George Worsley Adamson

For the wildlife conservationist, see George Adamson.
George Worsley Adamson

George Worsley Adamson at Pynes House, Upton Pyne, 1966

George Worsley Adamson
at Pynes House, Upton Pyne, 1966
Born February 7, 1913
The Bronx, New York
Died March 5, 2005
Exeter, Devon, England
Occupation illustrator and cartoonist
Spouse(s) Mary Marguerita Renée Diamond (1917–1997)
Website www.georgewadamson.com

George Worsley Adamson, RE, MCSD (7 February 1913 in The Bronx, New York – 5 March 2005 in Exeter, Devon) was a book illustrator, author and cartoonist who from 1931 held American and British dual citizenship.

Early life

George Adamson's parents[1][2] were George William Adamson, a master car builder for the Interborough Rapid Transit Company, and Mary Lydia (Lily, née Howard). His father, born in Glasgow, Scotland, and his mother, born in Wigan, Lancashire, had moved to New York City from Bombay, India in 1910. Following the death of his mother in February 1921, George Adamson sailed to England with his father, his Aunt Florence and his two sisters, Marie and Dorothy, on the Cunard liner RMS Caronia, landing at Liverpool on July 10th.[3] His father sailed back to New York in October 1921, where he died the following year.

George Adamson was educated at the Wigan Mining and Technical College[4] and the Liverpool City School of Art,[5] where he studied etching and engraving under Geoffrey Wedgwood RE.[6]

He exhibited at the Royal Academy (in 1937, 1939, 1940 and 1948) and contributed to Punch from 1939 to 1988.[6][7]

World War II

Meteorological office,
Pembroke Dock (1943)
FA03031 Air Historical Branch (AHB)

During World War II,[6][8] Adamson served with the RAF Coastal Command as a navigator in Catalina flying boats on the Western Approaches and trained on B-24 Liberators in the Bahamas. After he illustrated a feature on transatlantic flights for the Illustrated London News, he was appointed an official war artist for the Coastal Command. Some of Adamson's drawings are now in the Imperial War Museum and the RAF Museum.[1]

Career

Between 1946 and 1953 Adamson taught engraving and illustration at Exeter School of Art, Exeter, Devon.

In 1954 he worked briefly in London with the designer John Morgan for the newly formed design group Byrne and Woudhuysen Limited (later Woudhuysen & Company Ltd), before setting himself up as a full-time illustrator and cartoonist.

Illustrator

The first book for which he did the drawings and dust-wrapper was Marjorie Vasey's The Day is Over (Epworth Press, 1954).

From the mid-1960s, he illustrated Norman Hunter's Professor Branestawm books, providing a suitably zany continuity with W. Heath Robinson's illustrations from the 1930s.[1] Also in the 1960s, Adamson painted the jackets for Alan Garner's first two novels for children: The Weirdstone of Brisingamen (1960) and The Moon of Gomrath (1963). In the same decade Adamson did the drawings for the first book of poems Ted Hughes wrote for children: Meet My Folks! (1961); this was followed by the drawings he did for Ted Hughes's first book of children's stories, How the Whale Became (1963), and those for the first edition of The Iron Man (1968).

In 1970, Adamson illustrated the book based on Richard Carpenter's television series Catweazle; this was followed in 1971 by the drawings he did for the book based on the second series, Catweazle and the Magic Zodiac. In the 1980s, he illustrated the first five of the Richard Ingrams and John Wells Dear Bill books for Private Eye.[6]

Besides work for books, Adamson undertook commissions to illustrate articles in periodicals, among them the Listener and Nursing Times. For the latter he drew more than two hundred illustrations between 1963 and 1983.

Cartoonist

Adamson published his first cartoon in Punch in September 1939 and his last in the Spectator in September 1994. Over the intervening fifty-five years his cartoons appeared not just in Punch but in the Tatler and Bystander, Time & Tide, the Peterborough column in the Daily Telegraph, Private Eye and other magazines.

One of the last things that happened under Hollowood’s editorship was that Punch accepted a cover by George Adamson which showed Mr Punch sitting at an easel in the middle of a stretch of English countryside. Beside him was a book called How to Paint Like the Great Masters, and the landscape which Mr Punch was trying to paint was in fact modelled on the great masters… the Van Gogh trees on the right merged into a Samuel Palmer hillside, then into a Gainsborough or Constable field.

To make the landscape itself look like a collaboration between the masters was a brilliant idea. George did it brilliantly and we all thought it was a brilliant cover. One of the first actions by the new editor, William Davis, was to reject the cover. He didn’t understand it. Or, if he did understand it, he didn’t think it was funny. Or, if he thought it was funny, he didn’t think enough other people would find it was funny. No, let’s face it; he didn’t understand it.
— Miles Kington, The Punch Cartoon Album: 150 Years of Classic Cartoons.[9]        

Engraver and etcher

Thanks to Geoffrey Wedgwood's inspirational teaching at Liverpool City School of Art, Adamson developed what became a lifelong fascination with fine printing, especially dry-point, soft-ground etching and aquatint. In the early years after World War II he undertook several etchings for his own delight while teaching at Exeter School of Art. Between his portrait of his two-year-old son Peter One Morning (completed in 1950) and Killerton from the North (1979), however, there was a gap of many years during which he pursued his career as illustrator and cartoonist. He went back to printmaking with great enthusiasm in the late 1970s, exhibiting his works both new and old at the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers. Among his later prints are portraits of John Ogdon (1979) and Patricia Beer (1982).

Work in public collections

George Adamson's work is held in several public collections, including the following:

Selected works

Books written and illustrated by George Adamson

Books with illustrations and/or dust-wrappers by George Adamson

Record sleeves and CD covers

Selected exhibitions

Awards and honours

Adamson was the winner of the P.G. Wodehouse Centenary Illustration Award in Punch in 1981 and was subsequently commissioned to illustrate an anthology of P.G. Wodehouse short stories for the Folio Society published in 1983.[10]

George Adamson was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers in 1987.

References

  1. 1 2 3 John Adamson (23 March 2005). "George Worsley Adamson: Artist, illustrator and author". The Scotsman. In the late 1970s Adamson had returned to etching, being elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers in 1987. A print of St Andrew’s Cathedral is in the Fleming Collection of Scottish art: amid the gaunt ruins and the tourists, ghostly monks may be glimpsed processing solemnly towards the altar. From behind a tombstone a small child looks on — we too are invited to watch.
  2. ↑ John Adamson Publishing Consultants. "The life story of George Adamson, 1913-2005, illustrator and humorist".
  3. ↑ Board of Trade passenger list, inwards, Liverpool, July 1921 pt 2, RMS Caronia, pp. 12 and 14, BT26/693, The National Archives, Kew.
  4. ↑ Now part of Wigan and Leigh College.
  5. ↑ Later the Liverpool College of Art.
  6. 1 2 3 4 Patrick Boylan (2 April 2005). "George Adamson: Prolific illustrator of children's books and irreverent magazines". The Guardian.
  7. ↑ Mark Bryant (16 March 2005). "Obituary: George Adamson". The Independent. Influenced by classical artists such as Velazquez, Rembrandt, Goya and Hokusai, Adamson worked on paper, gesso surfaces and scraperboard, and used pen and ink, wash, charcoal, chalk, gouache, oils and other media. His training as an etcher, engraver and graphic designer also had an effect on his illustration and cartoon work and, to assist the speed of production and more accurate printing, he made extensive use of transparent acetate film to separate line drawings from painted backgrounds.
  8. ↑ "Full record display, George Worsley Adamson: illustrator and humorist". Intute.
  9. ↑ Miles Kington, Introduction, The Punch Cartoon Album: 150 Years of Classic Cartoons. Amanda-Jane Doran, ed. London: Grafton Books. December 1990 hardcover edition: ISBN 0-246-13645-6, ISBN 978-0-246-13645-9 (ASIN 0246136456). October 1991 paperback edition: ISBN 0-586-21483-6, ISBN 978-0-586-21483-1. ASIN 0586214836.
  10. ↑ George Adamson web site.

Further reading

External links

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