NORMAN THELWELL is undeniably best known for his cartoons of fat hairy ponies and their fearless young mounts. Yet to look past these instantly recognisable characters is to discover a Hogarth of the countryside, who left no aspect of British rural life untouched.
Born in Birkenhead, Merseyside, in 1923, the young Thelwell nurtured an innate fascination with the great outdoors from an early age, aided by family holidays to a farm in North Wales. Even as a child, he noted in his autobiography Wrestling with a Pencil (1986), he had ‘an irresistible compulsion to draw almost everything’ he saw.
During the Second World War, an 18-year old Thelwell joined the East Yorkshire Regiment in 1941. He began training near Hursley House in Hampshire, before being posted to India. Despite hating almost everything about the army, he later demonstrated a curious nostalgia for that golden, but dark time in his youth, returning to Hampshire to live with his family mere miles from where he remembered jumping into the river on an army exercise. This homecoming echoes the sense of place and memory his art evokes— for many, to look upon a Thelwell illustration is to see the countryside of one’s own youth.
It was in this countryside around Romsey and Winchester that some of the artist’s most sensitive and exquisite watercolours were painted. Those that knew him understand that he was never happier than when alone in the woods and fields, brush in hand. His deep-seated love for the land and the eclecticism of life it supports bleeds into his landscapes and is preserved there.
Denne historien er fra March 10, 2021-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent ? Logg på
Denne historien er fra March 10, 2021-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
