News and Reviews
A look at some of the most interesting new books, along with announcements and information on forthcoming exhibitions.

New Excursions into English Poetry
Britain’s brush with near-extinction in the Second World War was a great stimulus for British art and acted as a reaffirmation of nationhood and all that should be valued in our culture. Neo-romantic artists such as Piper, Craxton and Bawden presented striking, expressionistic images of the home-landscape, notably in a series of finely printed books, New Excursions.  Ruth Prickett explores this moving series.

The Fry Art Gallery
The work of many of Britain’s Neo-romantics can be viewed in this vibrant gallery. Gordon Cummings outlines the Gallery’s collection and history.

Katie Forrester
How do we relate to our landscape, the natural world, and its mythologies? Are we just living in the spaces of nature, or can we trace a deeper relationship? Katie Forrester explains her fascinating work as an interpreter of the myths and landscapes of Gloucestershire, with Sabrina, the River Severn, at its heart. Katie shows how the Romantic consciousness is still with us, and finds expression in her lyrical and evocative designs.

The Illustrator’s Interview
British art has always been as much about the present as the past. Bach Singh talks about his challenging imagery of the modern urban experience and how he explores the dynamics of character and cityscape as he stretches the language of illustration. By turns nostalgic and unsettling, Bach’s intense compositions are thought-provoking, strange, and curiously affectionate, with a deep feeling for community.

Victor Ambrus
Victor Ambrus was a distinguished illustrator of British history who makes what has been as immediate as the present. In part an antiquarian and in part a dramatist of previous events, Ambrus was also a great children’s illustrator. Jim O’Brien examines his quirky, febrile art, which veers between the journalistic and the dreamily absurd, a medieval siege and the ridiculous antics of the Sultan.

Thomas Onwhyn
Few will know the name of this Victorian illustrator, whose main claim to fame is his re-interpretation of Dickens’s Pickwick Papers– against the author’s wishes. Onwhyn’s illustrations, which are drawn in the sketchy, scratchy manner of nineteenth century cartoons, were a direct challenge to the work of Dickens’s “official illustrators.” Philip Allingham recovers the name and art of this interesting practitioner at the margins of respectability.

Helen Allingham
Allingham is best known for her comforting watercolours of English country life, but she was also an accomplished illustrator with a sharp eye for the nuances of setting, social behaviour, and the intricacies of character. Jo Devereux considers Allingham’s interpretation of Annie Thackeray’s Miss Angel, while also providing a detailed account of the artist’s life and circumstances.

Auguste Raffet
Some artists are difficult to pigeon-hole and one of these, for sure, is the Frenchman Auguste Raffett.  Raffett ranged over everything from satirical cartoons to portraits, though he was most interested in the imagery of war. Brian McAvera throws a light on this complex character who always demonstrated technical mastery but was sometimes lacking in emotional impact.

H. M. Bateman
Bateman is one of Britain’s best-known cartoonists, a satirist who scrutinized the workings of the class system and always provided a sharp insight into the humour of everyday life as it was lived, particularly, in the interwar years. Mark Bryant investigates the illustration work of this most amusing artist.

New Talent: Ellie Hisscott
Ellie, an undergraduate studying at the University of Gloucestershire, talks interestingly about her work and aspirations for the future.

Resources

Look and Learn
Information about the latest exhibitions along with details of important resources.

Contributors
Ruth Prickett was one of the founding editors of Illustration and edited its pages until 2022. Ruth is a self-confessed  bibliophile and has collected a wide variety of illustrated titles.

Gordon Cummings has been associated with the Fry Art Gallery Society for over thirty years and is currently its Honorary Secretary. For some years he was a trustee of the Association of Independent Museums and worked with the charity Paintings in Hospitals. He is currently Honorary treasurer of Museums Essex.

Dr Katie Forrester is an illustrator and printmaker, who also teaches illustration at University of Gloucestershire. Her work primarily draws on themes of nature, folk- and fairy-tale. The starting point for these themes began when she held the role of artist in residence for the Scottish Early Literature for Children Initiative (SELCIE) at the Museum of Childhood in Edinburgh. She is currently working with SELCIE to create a map of secret gardens in Old Town, Edinburgh, and is also creating a picture book with the Dr Jenner House Museum in Berkeley, Gloucestershire.

Bachittar “Sammy” Singh, known as Bach, hails from Handsworth, Birmingham, and is an artist, illustrator and printmaker with a rich cultural heritage rooted in his Indian background. His work has been showcased at Tate Modern (2016) and featured on SKY ARTS Landscape Artist of the Year (2025), with a notable shortlisting for the Contemporary Printmaking Prize (2023). Bach’s printmaking and illustration practice is centred around storytelling, with a passion for experimenting with materials and techniques to create narratives that invite viewers to interpret and engage with his work.

Dr Jim O’Brien read History of Art at University College London and completed his Ph.D at the University of Sussex. Alongside working in primary education, he writes on 20th century film, illustration and popular culture.

Professor Philip Allingham has published widely on Dickens and Hardy, focusing on their illustrations. Having retired from his post at Lakehead University, he has continued to work on the illustrators of Dickens while teaching part-time for Vancouver Island University and Thompson Rivers University.

Dr Jo Devereux teaches English at Western University in London, Ontario, Canada. She is the author of The Making of Women Artists in Victorian England(2016) and editor of Nineteenth-Century Women Illustrators and Cartoonists (2023). Currently, she is co-editing with Pamela Fletcher and Alison Syme a three-volume compendium of primary sources, titled The Victorian Artist.

Brian McAvera is a playwright, art critic, curator and, occasionally, an art historian. His best-known plays are the cycle Picasso’s Women, which have been translated for productions into over 20 languages. His most recent book is a critical study of the Irish artist, Graham Gingles (“Graham Gingles Boxed In,”Cyphers, Secrecy And Sensuality, F. E. McWilliam Gallery, 2022). Brian is an avid collector of French nineteenth century illustrated books.

Dr Mark Bryant was an editor in literary and academic book publishing before becoming a writer, journalist, lecturer and curator. He has written for the Independent, History Today, British Journalism Review, Military History Monthly and other publications. His books include the Dictionary of 20th Century British Cartoonists and Caricaturists, and he has contributed  articles to Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. He is a former trustee of the Cartoon Museum, London