A Short Biography

INTRODUCTION

The first week of secondary school is not a good time to strain a ligament in your knee. But who would know that it would lead me, in 1969, on the trail of an all-but forgotten artist? My mother was never one to allow children to stay at home rather than attend school, so she had me clearing a friend’s house. Aged just 11, my walking stick to hand, taking books from the bookcases around the cramped room and sorting them into sizes ready for packing, one small tatty paperback caught my eye with its realistic illustration of a grey seal. Reviews at the time of publication for Rowena Farr’s Seal Morning were expansive and generous, but later I was to discover controversial too. ‘The whole book is a miracle...enchanting’-Times Literary Supplement ‘An astonishing book, a gem of the purest ray, serene... This is a wonderful book: and I mean just that - it is full of wonder’ -Evening News ‘This is a book of real and rare enchantment, simply written about simple and primitive things, without any touch of affectation’ - Sunday Times ‘Escapism of the best and purest kind’ - Maurice Fleming. And that was just for one book illustrated by Raymond Sheppard

The standard art biographies by contrast somewhat dryly confine themselves to Sheppard’s affiliations and accreditations:

Raymond Sheppard Fellow of Zoological Society (F.Z.S, 1946); Society of Graphic Artists (S.G.A, 1947); Pastel Society (P.S., 1948); Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours (R.I, 1949).

They also state he was a member of the Chelsea Arts Club, the Langham Sketch Club and was a founding member of the Wapping Group of Artists. But these do little, beyond making one curious as to why an artist became a Fellow of the Zoological Society before becoming a member of various art societies.

BEGINNINGS

Raymond Sheppard, c. 1944

Raymond Sheppard, the son of Edward and Annie Sheppard, was born on 3 March 1913 in Muswell Hill, North London, and spent much of his childhood growing up in North West London. Both his parents were of Lancastrian extraction and both had an eye for art. Edward’s work as a manager at Pilkington’s Pottery was centred on sourcing strong designs for decorating Pilkington’s ever-expanding lines of glassware and ceramics. Annie, who was also employed by Pilkington’s, was an accomplished still life and floral artist with an art school training and a passion for drawing. As Raymond would do in years to come, Annie was a keen observer and loved to draw from life, first using her son as a model at age 3. Doubtless spurred on by his mother’s encouragement, Raymond, aged 7, entered and won a prize for the biscuit manufacturer Carr & Company’s art competition in 1921. The same year also saw him win a prize in a competition run by the toffee manufacturer Edward Sharp & Sons. Not one to rest on his laurels, the ever ambitious seven-year-old then secured the prize for the ‘Sheep’ competition run by Jaegar, with mention of his winning entry appearing in the Observer newspaper of 13 March, 1921. His enthusiasm for art remained strong and at the age of 15 he enrolled in a correspondence art tuition course run by the legendary illustrator John Hassall, where he was complimented on “his remarkable understanding on the correctness of drawing”. Keen to earn his living in an art related industry he gained employment as a studio apprentice at Loxley Brothers, a printing company. Whilst earning his wage, he furthered his art interests under the tutelage of Sylvan G. Boxsius, the famous printmaker at the Bolt Court School of Photoengraving and Lithography. The knowledge that he gleaned from these studies was to stand him in good stead for the rest of his career. The college, despite being non-fee paying, was geared up for instilling in its students a keen awareness of the revolution in print and reproductive technology, with classes in design, drawing, lettering, engraving and photo-mechanical processes providing the core to its curriculum. Sheppard’s subsequent output, with commissions in books, magazines, advertising, school textbooks and posters, were informed by the lessons he learned whilst studying at Bolt Court and such was his regard for the school that he returned there for 3 years as a full-time art teacher. He started freelancing at the comparatively youthful age of 21, but despite his undisputed talent, he found maintaining a steady stream of work difficult and his income was erratic at the best of times.  He put the resultant down-time to good use and became a regular visitor to London Zoo, where he continued to hone and refine his skills by immersing himself in the close study of wildlife, preserving his drawings in a series of sketchbooks, the accumulated knowledge as well as the drawings themselves would come to serve him well as his career developed. When war clouds loomed, he joined the RAF in 1940 and although initially selected for aircrew, he was rejected on health grounds and instead seconded to the Photographic Section for the duration of the war.  His war years were, however, enriched by romance and on the 3rd December 1942, he married his sweetheart Iris Gale, a girl who he had first encountered working at Mill Hill Library.  Their first child, Christine, was born on the 17th March 1944. In 1945, in the wake of the Allied liberation of Southern France,  he found himself stationed there in the Jonte River Valley - many of his sketches from this region revealing his consummate command of landscape drawing.

 

An old barn in South Mimms

Following on from his return to civilian life in 1945 and resuming his career, Raymond’s familial responsibilities increased again when Michael Sheppard was born on the 25th July 1946. Despite having to contend with an increasing work load, Sheppard was by all accounts a devoted husband and father and his family spent many holidays in Norfolk (home to his parents-in-law) and Dorset where his parents were based; where once again the artist captured in paintings and sketches the English countryside with which he felt so at home. His post-war career saw his work really starting to attract the attention it deserved and his strong and dynamic eye for design combined with his exquisite draughtsmanship gained him a succession of high profile commissions, which combined with the royalties generated by his own books, secured for him and his young family a much  better standard of living. Sadly, however, a shadow was thrown over what should otherwise have been a truly idyllic period for the young artist when sometime shortly after the end of the war he was diagnosed with cancer. His flourishing career was always at risk of being undermined by the illness and he was obliged to undergo a series of treatments throughout much of his later career. Eventually time ran out for Raymond Sheppard and he succumbed to the illness he had so stoically fought against on April 21st 1958. The range of his work both in terms of subject matter and command of a wide variety of media is astonishing for someone who died so young. We are very fortunate that Iris Sheppard preserved her husband’s work and indeed that their daughter, Christine, and son Michael, have done so much to make his name known throughout the ensuing years by helping organise exhibitions of his work.

ANIMAL ART

By the time he was 27 years of age, he was commissioned to write and illustrate How To Draw Birds (1940) for Studio Publications - in a co-edition with the United States. The numbers printed and sold are not known but within two years (and bear in mind this was during wartime when paper shortages were in place) four impressions were in existence and post-war at least two reprints occurred. The title was reviewed by Bentley Glass (together with Tunnicliffe’s How To Draw Farm Animals) in the Quarterly Review of Biology, (September 1950, p.339). “These little books are so crammed with the superb drawings of two real masters of line and shadow in the representation [...] the biologist will prize the inexpensive books for their unforgettable pictures.” The series is fondly remembered even today and can be bought quite easily. Sheppard went on to produce Drawing At The Zoo (1949), and More Birds To Draw (1956), both of which received equally enthusiastic plaudits on publication. In these titles he displays his ‘personal voice’ and this could be criticised, but we need to remember that these were predominantly created for children and beginners in the subject. How he came by these commissions might be explained by his regular visits with his children to London Zoo. Christine remembers being taken there and her father sitting for hours drawing animals, birds, and reptiles. In his first book How To Draw Birds he demonstrates his knowledge of anatomy gained from studying live animals and birds. A large note and sketch book still exists and would make a fantastic educational art book and no doubt assist many a modern artist. As an example, under a pencilled profile of a walking wolf, he writes:

“The chief masses of hair are:-

• The ruff, beginning before the ears, and passing over the back of the jaw and under the throat (better developed in lynx and lion).
• The curious little cushion under each ear, a sort of central point or whorl of the several hair currents of this region.
• The great thatch or mane of coarse hair; much developed in the lion.
• The soft woolly part under the throat meeting the mane; these two coincide nearby with the two parts of the Panniculus Cervicis”

He then goes on to mention the mane, the fur behind each shoulder, the two areas of reversed hair on the breast, the great “cushion of wool on each buttock”, etc. This is the shorter piece on the wolf - the larger piece mentions how the wolf’s fur sits in such a direction to facilitate moving stealthily through woodland and grasses and shaking off water as quickly as possible.

A man meticulous in his research deserved to become a member of the Zoological Society, which he did in 1946. Christine Sheppard remembers going to the Fellow’s Restaurant on a Sunday with her parents and feeling very grown-up. From comments he makes in the books he wrote, he would be fascinated by the relatively new areas of research to do with perception and visual studies and indeed it would have flattered him enormously that E. H. Gombrich included an example of Sheppard’s work in his classic Art and Illusion. Sheppard states “...drawing is really learning to “see properly”” and later says “when you look at a bird your eye is full of a lot of really unimportant details... it takes quite a lot of study to be able to “see properly” and quickly too, the important shapes, and main lines of rhythms of a pose.”  He advises his readers not to be concerned when an animal keeps changing positions when the artist tries to capture it, as it will often return to that pose. He advises the budding artists to just start a new drawing for each pose and avoid trying to do “those awfully boring and tedious sort of “feathered maps” [...] looking as flat as pancakes in Natural History books.” We know that Sheppard had a range of art books himself and he knew of the reverence that Chinese and Japanese artists had for the animal subject. He also mentions by name Warwick Reynolds, Joseph Crawhall and books by Edwin Noble, Frank Calderon, John Skeaping, R.B. Talbot Kelly. Of C.F.Tunnicliffe’s Bird Portraiture he says it “explains structure well and contains many lovely drawings”.

During the many trips to London Zoo Sheppard captured a national character - Brumas the Polar Bear cub who was born on 27 November 1949, the first baby polar bear to be successfully reared in Britain. In 1950 the Zoo’s annual attendance figures reached the three million mark. The bear was so popular that newsreels, books, postcards, toys and other souvenirs celebrated her fame. She died on 17 May 1958.

We are fortunate that innumerable examples of Sheppard’s work still exist and have in recent years been exhibited at the Wildlife Art Gallery (Lavenham, Suffolk), and Nature in Art gallery at Wallsworth Hall, Gloucester, the Church Farmhouse Museum, Hendon - (which unfortunately was closed due to cost cutting in March 2011). The main theme of these has been his animal studies which are beginning to fetch large prices. This is not to say there were no exhibitions of his work in his lifetime, there were. He exhibited at the Royal Exchange in September 1951 with the Wapping Group of Artists, of which he was a founding member, (regularly sketching and painting scenes around the Thames), Foyles Art Gallery in 1951, and alongside Fortunino Matania (a fellow member of the Royal Institute) in October 1954. He displayed a pastel drawing of macaws in the Pastel Society’s 50th anniversary in 1956 which was mentioned in The Times newspaper.

Sheppard created art using many materials including, as Sheppard states himself, “carbon pencil. Conté pen, pen and wash, or wash alone - sable brush and lamp black, scraperboard, fountain pen and finger smudges for rook nests and ordinary brown wrapping paper (white paper has an unpleasant glare)”. The range of subjects is overwhelming considering the limited number of years in which he drew, but animal portraits are the predominant theme.

ADVERTISING

British Motor Corporation (Huskies) advert

Mention should also be made of some particularly interesting areas in which he worked. Christine Sheppard cites the fact that his drawing of the Esso Tiger in the early 1950s enabled them to ‘move to a bigger house with a room he could use as a studio’. The adverts appeared in many magazines of the ‘50s and show a realistic tiger in three quarter view leaping and another of a side shot of a tiger leaping. Sheppard produced colour illustrations for calendars which were branded with a local garage and sold to many different garages throughout the South East of England, he must have found the connection to be lucrative as he also illustrated Regent 100 Petrol, Regent Oil, and Euclid Earthmovers. Also the trade magazine, The Motor, in the 1950s showed a full colour advertisement on the front cover and Sheppard produced a few for Lockheed Hydraulic Brakes - showing a buzzard ‘slamming on its brakes mid-air’ to catch a pigeon! He also created at least three advertisements in full colour for British Motor Corporation (used in, amongst others, Illustrated London News, The Field, Illustrated and Country Life magazines) showing huskies enduring sub-zero temperatures, elephants demonstrating strength and llamas in Peru on mountain ledges, demonstrating road-holding capabilities! One wonderful picture in full colour of a crocodile having its teeth cleaned by a bird appears on the cover of a trade leaflet advertising ‘Paynocil’ aspirin. Sheppard also produced some travel posters – one that allowed overprinting was used for train excursions to the zoo – and shows a zookeeper taking children for rides on an elephant and others come up in railway auctions from time to time. It is likely this in-road was made due to his sharing a flat with Gregory Brown, who also produced many famous London Transport posters.

BOOK ILLUSTRATION

Sheppard’s illustrations for book titles deserve a separate article, but at a conservative count he illustrated over 150 titles and that does not include annuals. He illustrated five Enid Blyton Annual holiday books with very cartoony drawings - unusual for such a naturalist. His two most popular Blyton titles were the Adventures of Pip (1948) and the sequel More Adventures of Pip for which he did the full colour wraparound covers and 30 black and white line drawings in ink in each book. The contents were gathered from Blyton’s stories in The Sunday Graphic. His work also appears in the famous BBC Uncle Mac’s Children’s Hour books of the late ‘30s - one character being the unusually named three-headed giant, “Odds-Bobs-and-Mackerel”. Trying to track down his work with Blackie and Sons Limited can be exceedingly tricky as many examples have been found reprinted under different titles as was common in the ‘40s and ‘50s. His earliest work can be found in titles such as Animal Stories, Tales About Animals, Jolly Pets and general titles that sound upbeat The Winner Book of Stories and Three Cheers A Book of Stories. However, they are worth tracking down due to the nostalgic look of the muted colour reproductions. Odhams did the same - The Children’s Nature Book 1958 containing a full colour page of “Birds of prey” was a reprint of Nature Lovers Companion. Sheppard also provided illustrations for perennial favourites such as Mark Twain’s classics, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, as well as Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty, part of the Blackie Stanhope Library series. He also produced colour art for an unusual series to accompany A Caravan Family by M.D. Hillyard. In 1952 Sheppard started an association with Edward James “Jim” Corbett, the big game hunter renowned in India for setting up the first national park and leading to the conservation of big cats in India. Born in 1875 he wrote many books of his exploits as a hunter and his Man-Eaters of Kumaon sold in 27 languages and is still in print. Sheppard illustrated the following titles The Man-Eating Leopard of Rudraprayag (1954), Man Against Man-Eaters in the same year was abridged from the two preceding titles and The Temple Tiger and More Man-Eaters of Kumaon (1957). He also illustrated the now engagingly quaint Tree Tops (1955) subtitled “An account of the scenes witnessed by Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh”. This work chronicling his involvement with the royal party, on what was to become the eve of Princess Elizabeth’s accession to the throne, provided the basis for a delightful, 30-page, short story. Needless to say, the illustrations furnished the artist with yet another opportunity to share his love of wildlife with the occasional use of stipple in a few of the illustrations - an unusual practice for him.

The Old Man and the Sea

Another high-profile title that Sheppard contributed to was The Old Man And The Sea by Ernest Hemingway (first published in 1952). The 1953 Reprint Society edition, however, contains not just Sheppard’s illustrations but also, those by Charles Frederick Tunnicliffe. The publisher commissioned them both to illustrate this Pulitzer Prize winning book, “Originally commissioned as alternatives, these two artists’ different interpretations of the story were considered so excellent and so interesting in their varying styles that both have been included”. Seven illustrations exist by Sheppard that were unpublished and even without these Sheppard has 18 and Tunnicliffe 16 and that’s without counting the multiple uses of Sheppard’s illustration as cover and endpapers.

 

 

MAGAZINE ILLUSTRATION

At this point it is worth pausing to take in the quantity of drawing that Raymond Sheppard produced, because, as stated above, this subject could also do with a separate article. Sheppard’s clearly delineated art appears as early as 1936 in Zoo: The National Nature Magazine, produced by Zoological Society of London, starting in that year. After this a long association began in Boy’s Own Paper around the same time – Sheppard was still in his early twenties. His work appeared in the monthly magazine until 1940 (doing a cover in November of a soldier standing guard over Britain) and it’s unknown why he then left Boy’s Own behind but he returned in the 1950s. The June 1958 issue of the boy’s magazine contained an obituary (p.18) which accompanied his last illustration - of an otter chasing a fish.  Alfred J. Silverton was the Art Editor at Lilliput in the 1950s and Sheppard was hired and produced many illustrations - mainly in black and white line from 1951 till December 1957. Fortunately, Christine Sheppard still has many of the originals and the quality of the line (and the occasional colour) is as clear today as then. Large photogravure magazines were popular in the 1950s with the most famous being arguably Picture Post from Hulton Press. The majority of social and news items had high quality photographs to accompany them, but the only stories illustrated, were by Raymond Sheppard. It is not known why this should be, but Somerset Maugham’s short story "The Man With The Scar", was one, as was Russell Braddon’s story of Leonard Cheshire and how he won the Victoria Cross. Neville Duke’s autobiography was accompanied by some beautiful double page black and white ink wash illustrations. More magazines could be mentioned - Everybody’s, John Bull, Argosy and the all but forgotten Wide World.

COMICS

Sheppard’s naturalistic style lent itself well to clear delineation for younger readers. In the 1950s series “Animals And Their Young” and “British Birds And Their Nests”, single panel illustrations were drawn in colour. Sheppard produced these for Hulton Press’ younger companion to the Eagle comic, Swift. For Eagle itself he produced “Famous Horse Stories” and drew "Black Beauty, an adaptation of Anna Sewell’s classic" –which appeared in the Girl comic.  He also produced line drawings to accompany stories in the Girl Annuals in the 1950s as well as for The Pony Club Annuals.

CONCLUSION

Raymond Sheppard’s work was prolific in the 45 years of his life. An article like this cannot do him justice, having skirted over his abstract paintings in the late 40s early 50s, created in the depths of cancer treatment, or his work on school textbooks and accompanying posters. I’m still discovering examples of his work - one particularly ephemeral cover was for Prevention of Mastitis in Dairy Herds for Imperial Chemicals. Although neither Tunnicliffe nor Sheppard received credits for the use of the book The Old Man And The Sea, the recent movie The Reader starring Kate Winslet shows her taking various books off a shelf, one of which is recognisable in the last few minutes of the film, as Hemingway’s story. Christine Sheppard tells me that the $50.00 fee for using the copy of the book was split between her family and the Tunnicliffe estate. The recent exhibitions of his work have elevated his position amongst those who collect artists who concentrate on nature and animals in particular, but his magazine work lies unknown to all but a few avid collectors. Thankfully due to the work of the former Wildlife Art Gallery, Andrew Haslen and Paul Liss - aided enormously by Christine and Michael Sheppard, Raymond Sheppard’s work will still be known for many years to come. I’m so glad I discovered that copy of Rowena Farre’s book Seal Morning back in 1969.

SELECTED REFERENCES

• Haslen, Andrew (2009) Capturing the moment: Raymond Sheppard. Peterborough: Langford Press
• Liss, Paul. (2010) Raymond Sheppard catalogue Available at:  http://issuu.com/paulliss/docs/lfa-raymond-sheppard [Accessed  December 2022]