Ernest Howard Shepard Fellow of the Royal Academy |
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Born |
St John's Wood, London |
10 December 1879
Died | 24 March 1976 London |
(aged 96)
Battles/wars | World War I |
Awards | OBE, Military Cross |
Other work | Artist and book illustrator |
Ernest Howard Shepard OBE, MC (10 December 1879 – 24 March 1976) was an English artist and book illustrator. He is known especially for illustrations of the anthropomorphic soft toy and animal characters in The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame and Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne.
Shepard was born in St John's Wood, London. Having shown some promise in drawing at St Paul's School, in 1897 he enrolled in Heatherley's School of Fine Art in Chelsea. After a productive year there, he attended the Royal Academy Schools, winning a Landseer scholarship in 1899 and a British Institute prize in 1900. There he met Florence Eleanor Chaplin, who he married in 1904. By 1906 Shepard had become a successful illustrator, having produced work for illustrated editions of Aesop's Fables, David Copperfield, and Tom Brown's Schooldays, while at the same time working as an illustrator on the staff of Punch. The couple bought a house in London, but in 1905 moved to Shamley Green, near Guildford.
Shepard was a prolific painter, showing in a number of major exhibitions. He exhibited at the Royal Society of Artists, Birmingham—a traditional venue for generic painters—as well as in the more radical atmosphere of Glasgow's Institute of Fine Arts, where some of the most innovative artists were on show. He was twice an exhibitor at the prestigious Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, one of the largest and most important provincial galleries in the country, and another at the Manchester Art Gallery, a Victorian institution now part of the public libraries. But at heart, Shepard was a Londoner, showing sixteen times at the Royal Academy on Piccadilly. His wife, who was also a painter, found a home in London's West End venue for her own modest output during a 25-year career.