artist research - william heath robinson

8/10/2019 Artist Research - William Heath Robinson

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About the artist:

William Heath Robinson (31 May 1872 13 September 1944) had a unique vision in his artwork. He

always wanted to live in the countryside but the big city played a major part in his development. His

artwork was given a push during the First World War and a lot of the themes in his cartoons are

military, machinery and inventions. He poked fun at the current events and even his readers.Homemadeinventions and complex machinery that did simple tasks can be seen throughout his

cartoons. (W.Heath Robinson - Suburban Subversive, 2007)

In the 1930s Heath Robinson was known as "The Gadget King" and he is still most widely

remembered for his wonderful humorous drawings. But humorous art was only his third choice of

career, and one that he turned to almost by accident. On leaving the Royal Academy Schools in 1895

his ambition was to become a landscape painter. He soon realised that such painting would not pay

the bills, so he followed his two older brothers into book illustration. He rapidly established himself as

a talented and original practitioner in his chosen field, and in 1903 felt sufficiently secure to marry.

However, the following year a publisher who had commissioned a large quantity of drawings was

declared bankrupt. The young Heath Robinson, who had just become the father of a baby girl, had

quickly to find a new source of income. He turned to the high class weekly magazines such as The

Sketch and The Tatler who paid well for large, highly finished humorous drawings, and within a year

was being acclaimed as a unique talent in the field of humorous art.

For a number of years, he combined his careers as illustrator and humorist with equal and growing

success, but by the end of World War One the market for lavishly illustrated gift books, which had

flourished during the first decade of the century, had all but disappeared. The resulting gap was

readily filled since his talents as a humorist were in ever increasing demand, especially for

advertising. For the remainder of his career his main employment was in providing his unique brand

of humour to magazines and advertising, supplemented by occasional commissions for fantasy

illustrations.

For his own pleasure, he continued to paint in watercolours, experimenting with effects of light and

colour. His importance, as an innovator in the fields of illustration and advertising, and perhaps more

importantly as the heir of Rowlandson and Cruikshank in the British humorous tradition, has yet to be

fully appreciated, and his work is poorly represented in public collections.(Heathrobinson.org, 2014)

Influence:

It's possible to see his influence in a wide range of subsequent creative works -- from Monty

Python, The Goons and Wallace & Gromit. Aardman Animations' Nick Park has said that all of

Wallace's inventions are designed around the principle of "using a sledgehammer to crack a nut", aprinciple that encapsulates Heath Robinson's work perfectly.(Wired UK, 2014)

The feel I got for the artist:

I think designing a metropolis based on H. Robinsons work will be challenging. The style is definitely

cartoony, with very busy streets. The artist loved the countryside so maybe the metropolis can be

full of parks and open spaces, with a lot of people being busy around their inventions and

contraptions. The colours need to imitate watercolours and maybe the predominant texture can be

the rough surface of a water colour sheet of paper.

Artwork:


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Bibliography:

Heathrobinson.org, (2014). The William Heath Robinson Trust Website - About the W H Robinson.

[online] Available at: http://heathrobinson.org/robinson/index.htm [Accessed 31 Oct. 2014].

W.Heath Robinson - Suburban Subversive. (2007). [video] BBC Four.

Wired UK, (2014). Heath Robinson: the unsung hero of British eccentricity and innovation (Wired

UK). [online] Available at: http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-07/29/heath-robinson-

deserves-a-museum [Accessed 31 Oct. 2014].

artist research - william heath robinson

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