Garth Williams
| Garth Williams | |
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An illustration by Garth Williams for Charlotte's Web showing his techniques of careful lines, detail, action, emotion, texture, and shading.
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| Born | Garth Montgomery Williams April 16, 1912 New York City, United States |
| Died | May 8, 1996 (aged 84) Marfil near Guanajuato, Mexico |
| Occupation | Artist |
Garth Montgomery Williams (April 16, 1912 – May 8, 1996) was an American artist who came to prominence in the American postwar era as an illustrator of children's books. Many of the books he illustrated have become classics of American children's literature.
In Stuart Little, Charlotte’s Web, and in the Little House series of books of Laura Ingalls Wilder, Williams['s] drawings have become inseparable from how we think of those stories. In that respect... Williams['s] work belongs in the same class as Sir John Tenniel’s drawings for Alice in Wonderland, or Ernest Shepard’s illustrations for Winnie the Pooh.
His friendly, fuzzy baby animals populated a dozen Little Golden Books.
Mel Gussow in The New York Times wrote, "He believed that books 'given, or read, to children can have a profound influence.' For that reason, he said, he used his illustrations to try to 'awaken something of importance... humor, responsibility, respect for others, interest in the world at large.'"
Garth Williams was born in New York City in 1912 to English artists, his father was a cartoonist for Punch, his mother was a landscape painter. "Everybody in my home was always either painting or drawing." He grew up on farms in New Jersey and Canada, but In 1922 he and his family moved to the United Kingdom. Williams studied architecture and worked for a time as an architect's assistant. But when the Great Depression came he made up his mind to be an artist instead of an architect. He began his studies at Westminster School of Art in 1929, and in 1931 was awarded a four-year scholarship to the Royal College of Art, where he created a sculpture that was awarded the British Prix de Rome. He continued his education at the British School at Rome in Germany and Italy, until the outbreak of World War II in Europe.
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Wikipedia