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The imaginations of hosts of little children, many now parents themselves, have been shaped by the paintbrush of Helen Oxenbury. Her illustrations have guided millions of toddlers off to the Land of Nod, yet the first solo exhibition of her work has been a long time coming.
And so, just as oddly, has any follow-up collaboration with Michael Rosen, considering the huge success of We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, their 1989 picture book.
But now not only is a London gallery about to celebrate Oxenbury’s influential drawings, but the spring will see a key publishing event as she teams up with Rosen once again.
“I have finished the drawings, but I still cannot possibly explain what it is about. It is quite weird. It feels a bit like a Dr Seuss, which I love,” the 86-year-old told the Observer this weekend.
It is only the second time the duo have worked together and Oxenbury’s new illustrations are to accompany a Rosen poem called Oh Dear, Look What I Got!, a work he has regularly performed live. It describes a series of mishaps on a shopping expedition and features the same repeated, ear-worm phrases that are such a popular trademark of Bear Hunt.
“I like the title, Oh Dear, which is quite a mild exclamation. It couldn’t really have been Oh shit, I know, although I do sometimes say that when I am drawing a picture,” confessed Oxenbury.
“I’ve already read the book to some of my eight grandchildren and normally, when I say, ‘Look, this is something that Granny has done,’ they can be quite uninterested. This time, though, I have found they did later come out with some of the repetitive bits of verse.”
Infamously, when Oxenbury’s watercolours for Bear Hunt were first shown to Rosen he was rather nonplussed. “He asked, ‘What on earth story is this?’ because he had imagined something quite different,” recalled Oxenbury.
“But I hope Michael trusts me. He should do by now! It is up to our editor at Walker Books to show him the finished images. We did have some trouble with the ending, but that was sorted out.”
Rosen and Oxenbury were invited to work separately on the original book, which was inspired by an American folk song. The Ipswich-born artist based her final, atmospheric beach scenes on childhood memories of the light at Felixstowe and on the River Deben.
“I would never have believed that book would still be so popular. It sold OK when it was first published, then took off in the most extraordinary way.” Since then Bear Hunt has been turned into both an animated film and a stage show.
Her upcoming exhibition, Helen Oxenbury: Illustrating the Land of Childhood, is planned to run from 6 March until 14 December at the Peggy Jay gallery at Burgh House in Hampstead, north London, close to Oxenbury’s home.
“I have no idea why I haven’t had a solo show before, but it will be jolly nice to see it all up there,” she said. “I tend to forget what I have done.”
Male illustrators, she notes, historically have had no such trouble taking centre stage. “Men have taken the limelight because they are men,” she said. “The number of men having their own exhibitions is enormous, but it just stems from their general dominance.
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“Children’s book illustrations may have started out with women, such as Kate Greenaway and Beatrix Potter, at a time when it didn’t make much money, but then in the 60s and 70s it became quite a career and there was money to be made.”
One of these offending men was Oxenbury’s own late husband, the writer and illustrator John Burningham, who died in 2019 and is best known for Mr Gumpy’s Outing and Avocado Baby. The couple met at London’s Central School of Art and Design in 1957, where Oxenbury was studying set design. They later married and had three children.
Did they influence each other’s work? “No, I don’t think so, although someone did once say they would have known we were married because the babies we drew look the same. But I think we were influenced by our babies!”
A multiple winner of the prestigious Kate Greenaway medal, including joint recognition in 1969 for her work on Edward Lear’s The Quangle Wangle’s Hat and Margaret Mahy’s The Dragon of an Ordinary Family, and then later in 1999 for Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Oxenbury has a wealth of work to select from for her solo show.
“I’ll choose from Bear Hunt, because people know that one so well, and from So Much by Trish Cooke, because it is a delightful book I enjoyed doing. And then perhaps something from The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig, by Eugene Trivizas, which is quite funny,” the illustrator said, explaining that she always sees “quite clearly” how the pictures should look whenever she reads a new text.
“I instantly know how it should be done, although whether I can do it is another matter.”
So now, in the later phases of a 50-year career, the woman who first brought colour and form to Rosen’s famous verse is to get more of the recognition she deserves.
The depth of her emotional impact on readers, though, still surprises her: “It is nice when people say they know my work, because you sit there doing all these pictures on your own for days. So it is lovely to get people’s reactions.”
