James Campbell - The Art of Winnie-The-Pooh: How E. H. Shepard Illustrated an Icon

Minette Shepard, c. 1943.

The Shepard Trust

Throughout this period my grandfather brought to all of his work a great sense of humility and humanity, I suspect partly at least as a result of his experiences in the First World War, and the recollection of his own happy family life when his own children were small probably conjured up something of the childhood innocence of Winnie-the-Pooh. He retained an essential humor, honesty, and truthfulness in his artistic work that characterized his approach to life as well as to work. I feel a special and personal connection to my grandfather when I look back over these wonderful drawings which have meant so much to so many childhoods around the world. I had the enormous privilege (not that I realized it at the time) to have had Growler, the model for the drawings of Winnie-the-Pooh, for the very early part of my childhood. I very much hope you will enjoy looking at these illustrations, drawings, and photographs, and reading about how they came about, as much as I have done in rediscovering them.

Minette Hunt (ne Shepard)

Sussex 2017

Winnie-the-Pooh, or just Pooh Bearthese words have a unique resonance in our cultural heritage. Across the world, from Tokyo to Los Angeles and from Melbourne to Copenhagen, a picture of Pooh will bring instant recognition, and often a smile.

E. H. Shepard is one of a small and select group of illustrators to remain a household nameeven forty years after his death, and more than ninety years after the publication of some of the most famous books of all time. When asked to close ones eyes and conjure up an image of Pooh, what do we see? Inevitably, our personal favorite of E. H. Shepards evocative and iconic drawings. While the four booksWhen We Were Very Young, Winnie-the-Pooh, Now We Are Six, and The House at Pooh Corner, known collectively as the Winnie-the-Pooh bookshave never been out of print, and have been through countless editions, the story of how the illustrations of this funny old bear and his friends came about has been relatively little told.

This book tells that story, setting out how between them A. A. Milne and E. H. Shepard created a marriage of stories and pictures that lies at the heart of the timeless attraction of Winnie-the-Pooh. Featuring many previously unseen drawings, sketches, and unused illustrations, principally held in archives at the University of Surrey, the Shepard family archive, and private collections, this book shows how the images of Pooh and other well-known characters evolved and developed.

E. H. Shepard is principally remembered for his iconic childrens illustrations (or decorations as they are always described in the Winnie-the-Pooh books) for the four Pooh books and for The Wind in the Willowsall of which were completed within a ten-year period from the early 1920s.

Yet Shepard was much more than just an illustrator of childrens books. A prolific artist as well as an illustrator, his first works date from his childhood in the 1880s, and he was still drawing in the 1970san amazing ten decades of active work across a wide range of subjects and genres. Many feel that Shepard brought much personal experience to the decorations for the Pooh stories, not only in the use of his own sons teddy bear, Growler, as the model for Winnie-the-Pooh, but also in the images of charm, innocence, and even whimsy that deliberately harked back to an idealized Edwardian heyday, when Shepards own children were the age of Christopher Robin. Unusually for that time, he was a very hands-on father, playing make-believe and delving into the dressing-up box to join in their games.

An early sketch of an anxious looking Winnie-the-Pooh struggling into his duffle coat.

The Shepard Trust. Reproduced with permission from Curtis Brown.

The trauma of the First World War, experienced at first hand by both Milne and Shepard, and the peacetime challenges that immediately followedthe epidemic of Spanish flu, widespread unemployment, and other social issuesmay have seemed at times overwhelming, and so the Winnie-the-Pooh stories and the way in which they were presented struck a strong chord with families, adults, and children alike, desperate for an escape into a comforting fantasy.

And while the stories and poems, largely set in London and in the Ashdown Forest in Sussex, are quintessentially English, from the very start they broke free of their natural constraints, selling not only in English-speaking territories, but also in multiple languages (including Latin) across the world. In all of these editions, languages, and countries, one thing remains absolutely consistent: the decorations. Shepards drawings have universal appeal, need no translation, and have an enduring resonance with adults and children of all ages.

While Milne wrote no more about Pooh and his friends after 1928, Shepard continued to draw, color, and illustrate new editions of the original four books until shortly before his death in 1976, at the age of ninety-six. In this book you will find sketches, outlines, and drafts that have never before been shown, and which throw a new light on the creative process that brought Winnie-the-Pooh to life. Shepard never tired of the bear, always aware of the reach and connection of the characters and their images around the world. In this century, Shepard would almost certainly have been amazed to see both the Winnie-the-Pooh books and