David Low

This article is about British cartoonist David Low; the American astronaut can be found under George David Low .

David Low, 1947

Self-portrait by David Low

Sir David Alexander Cecil Low (born April 7, 1891 in Dunedin , New Zealand , † September 19, 1963 in London ), better known as David Low , was a British political cartoonist , cartoonist and illustrator. Low is now considered one of the most important political cartoonists of the 20th century. He drew a. a. for the London Star (1919-27), the Evening Standard (1927-50), the Daily Herald (1950-53) and the Manchester Guardian (1953).

Live and act

Youth and Beginnings (1891 to 1907)

Low was the third of four children of businessman David Brown Low and his wife Jane Caroline Low, née Flanagan. The father's ancestors immigrated to New Zealand from Scotland in the 1860s. The mother's were from Dublin and had come to New Zealand in the 1850s. As a child, he moved with his family to Christchurch , where he first attended Christchurch Boys' High School. After the death of his older brother when Low was eleven, his parents took him out of school out of fear of losing another child and began teaching him at home.

Low began reading the cartoons in British newspapers and magazines at the age of eight. He developed a particular fondness for the work of Charles Keene, Linley Sambourne and especially for that of Phil May, whose art he "carried in himself" for a lifetime ("Once having discovered May I never let him go" ). Imbued with the idea of ​​making a living as a cartoonist and caricaturist as a child, Low had been sending drawings of his own to magazines in Great Britain and Australia since he was eleven. At the age of eleven he had his first small success when the British magazine The Big Budget accepted one of his drawings. Soon after, his hometown Christchurch magazine The Spectator found itself ready to reprint some of Low's work.

In the following years, Low was able to sell an increasing number of his own work: The teenager Low received orders for the graphic design of advertisements and as a draftsman of court hearing sketches for the sensational newspaper New Zeland Truth . He also occasionally contributed images to The War Cry , an organ of the Salvation Army . He ended up delivering illustrated jokes to the Spectator twice a week.

As a cartoonist in New Zealand and Australia (1907-1919)

Low's attempts to systematically train himself within institutions failed without exception: he broke off a two-year course at the business college and found the art seminars at the Canterbury Art College to be "uninspiring". After these negative experiences, Low remained self-taught for the rest of his life. In terms of drawing, he trained himself further in dealing with colleagues through direct observation. One of these colleagues, cartoonist Fred Raynor, gave Low an engagement with one of his own magazines in 1907. Soon after, Low got a full-time job with the Spectator , but eventually switched to rival Canterbury Times in 1910 because he disliked the Spectator's policies. In addition, Low received twice as much space for his drawings at the Times as at the Spectator and received twice the salary.

Despite these successes, Low continued to send copies of his work to newspaper publishers abroad. The Australian newspaper The Sydney Bulletin , considered a talent factory for budding cartoonists in the British press, began publishing Low's work in 1911. In the same year he was offered a six-month contract as a cartoonist in Melbourne . During his time at Bulletin , Low worked with cartoonists Livingstone Hopkins and Norman Lindsay , among others , who influenced his stylistic development. After two more years as a cartoonist for general use, Low was hired as a regular cartoonist in the Melbourne section of the Bulletin in 1914 . He gained further popularity through a series of cartoons with which he brought readers closer to the dignitaries of various Australian provinces who had visited around 1914 on a tour of the country. In 1915 these caricatures were reprinted as a collection in an illustrated book.

Low achieved national fame in 1916 with the cartoon "The Imperial Conference", which showed William Hughes , the then Australian Prime Minister.

Relocation to Great Britain England (1919 to 1930)

A collection of Low's "Hughes cartoons," which he published in 1918 under the title "The Billy Book," and an article by the writer Arnold Bennett in New Statesman magazine about his art, made Low in Great Britain a larger group of people known and brought him the attention of Henry Cadbury, a partner in the evening newspaper "London Star" and "The Daily News", who brought him to London in August 1919. In 1920 Low married his childhood sweetheart Madeline Grieve Kenning. He made the marriage proposal by telegram. The marriage resulted in two daughters.

In London, Low got his publisher through, unlike other cartoonists, who were only given small picture spaces in the newspapers, to be allowed to produce large cartoons that filled half the newspaper pages, as he was used to from Australia.

His most famous work for "Star" was a series of portraits of "Britain's fifty most distinguished people," including George Bernard Shaw , Arnold Bennett , HG Wells , Hilaire Belloc , GK Chesterton and Arthur Conan Doyle . It speaks for Low's artistic rank already established at this time (Bennett had already attested to drawing “like the fish swims”) that only two of those portrayed - Rudyard Kipling and John Galsworthy - refused to model him. In addition, Low published cartoons in magazines such as Punch Magazine and The Graphic .

In 1927 Low moved as a cartoonist to the Evening Standard , a predominantly conservative daily newspaper owned by the British "newspaper king" Lord Beaverbrook . Although Beaverbrook represented political views that were completely opposite to Low's - Low saw himself as a left-wing liberal, Beaverbrook was a downright right-wing man who was one of the leading members of the Conservative Party - he guaranteed the cartoonist unrestricted artistic freedom in the choice of his subjects Cartoons too. Beaverbrook Low also gave full freedom in the attitude and opinions he would express in his caricatures and moreover promised to abstain from any editorial influence. In addition, the extremely good pay that Beaverbrook promised would have been an incentive for Low to work for Beaverbrook. Regardless of their political differences, Low and Beaverbrook were humanly close for a variety of reasons: Both were colonial boys ; that is, they came from British Dominions (Beaverbrook from Canada, Low from New Zealand), and faced metropolitan Britain with a remnant of a distance. Both had a reputation for taking pleasure in attracting public attention ( showmanship ), and both were independent in their own way: Low was considered a free spirit, Beaverbrook a prime example of publishing tolerance.

Low as an "anti-fascist" cartoonist (1930 to 1945)

In the thirties, Low stood out in particular through anti-fascist caricatures in which he attacked the politics of the continental European fascist regimes with biting mockery and disavowed the European dictators, namely Hitler , Franco and Mussolini , in irreconcilable images: in this he mostly managed the balancing act to ridicule caricatured potentates through satirical exposure and exaggeration, but at the same time to leave no doubt as to their dangerousness and thus to have an alarming effect on the readers.

In the opposite direction, Low also ceaselessly criticized the conflict- averse appeasement policies of the British governments under Stanley Baldwin and Arthur Neville Chamberlain and did not shy away from personal attacks on leading politicians of this direction such as Chamberlain and Halifax. Low defined himself as “a nuisance dedicated to sanity” (a nuisance in the service of reason).

Logically, Low was banned from publishing in Germany and Italy and his work was banned from public journalism. In 1937, the British Foreign Minister Lord Halifax was even asked by the German Propaganda Minister Goebbels to stop the publication of caricatures of the “notorious Low”, as they would damage German-British relations.

In the German and partly in the British press Low was denigrated as a warmonger . For example, Margot Asquith, the widow of former Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith , called Low's attacks on Prime Minister Chamberlain in 1938 in an open letter to the Evening Standard "cruel and mischievous".

On the other hand, his tireless criticism of European fascism and, in particular, of Adolf Hitler's person , earned him admiration in many places: For example, Sigmund Freud , one of the most ardent admirers of Low's work, attested him the highest respect for "your glorious art and your inexorable, unfailing criticism" .

During the war, especially in 1940, a catastrophic year from a British point of view, when, after the defeat of France and the failure of the British expedition to Norway, the National Socialist victory seemed inevitable at times, Lows carried cartoons such as "All Behind You, Winston" (May 14, 1940 ) is helping to strengthen British war morale and to spread confidence that it was ultimately possible to wrestle the Axis powers .

Low was eventually made an official British martial artist and in this capacity took part in the Nuremberg Trials together with Joseph Flatter as a press observer .

Late years (1945 to 1963)

In 1949 Low moved from the Evening Standard to the Daily Herald , for which he worked from 1950 to 1953. From 1953 to 1963 he finally drew for the Manchester Guardian (1953-1963), where he received a higher salary than the editor.

1962 Low was beaten by the British Queen Elizabeth II to the Knight Bachelor , so that he was allowed to use the suffix "Sir" until his death in 1963.

Low in relation to its great contemporaries

Celebrities Low was on friendly terms with included: Will Dyson , the other great British cartoonist of his day, Arnold Bennett, and the writer HG Wells. With politicians and political activists such as Richard Stafford Cripps , Aneurin Bevan , Ellen Wilkinson, Henry Nevinson and Norman Angell , Low was connected in his capacity as a radical anti-fascist in a political fighting community.

Low had sworn enemies in the leaders of European (legal) totalitarianism: In addition to the German Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, whose abuse of Lows was already mentioned above, Adolf Hitler himself is said to have held a personal grudge against Low.

Personal friendship in spite of the contradicting political influences Low was connected with the Minister of the Interior Sir William Joynson-Hicks, 1st Viscount Brentford , (called Jix).

After 1945, Low's name is said to have been discovered on "black lists" of the Nazi regime found in Germany, on which the names of all those people who were still inaccessible to the Nazis and who were to be disposed of as unpopular after a " final victory " were found.

The relationship with Winston Churchill, to whom he set artistic monuments with heroic and admiring caricatures such as “We are all behind you, Winston”, but also with benevolent ridicule as a half-naked fakir conjuring up snakes (an allusion to a denigration of Gandhi by Churchill) by the Cocoa pulled, turned out to be quite complicated: Both men had known each other since 1922. Low had initially been irritated by Churchill's imperialist attitude towards Australia and found its ideals and views to be narrow-minded. Churchill, for his part, later accused Low of communist activities and called him a "Trotskyist".

The artist: Influences, working methods and artistic work

Low is one of the most influential cartoonists of the 20th century. His work includes more than 14,000 drawings that were created over a period of 50 years and have been sold to over 200 newspapers and magazines worldwide.

Charles Keene, Linley Sambourne and Phil May are considered to be his artistic role models . Low's meticulous way of working was characteristic, and it took him an average of three days to create a caricature.

Low's best-known caricature is Rendezvous from the Evening Standard of September 20, 1939, in which he targets the division of Poland between the German Reich and the Soviet Union with bitter graphics and which can still be found in countless school history books today: The picture shows themselves Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin opposite and pay each other, over the corpse of their jointly murdered victim Poland (personified as a murdered person), by bowing and hating respect. The greeting is famous: "The scum of the Earth, I believe?" (Hitler to Stalin; German about “The scrap of the earth, I think?”) “The bloody assassin of the workers, I presume?” (Stalin to Hitler; German about “The bloody murderer of the workers, I suppose?”).

In a vote in History Today magazine , Low's Rendezvous was voted the Most Important Caricature of the 20th Century by twice as many votes as any other proposed caricature.

Works

• Low's Annual , 1908.
• Caricatures , 1915.
• The Billy Book , 1918.
• Man, the Lord of Creation , 1920.
• Lloyd George & Co. , 1921.
• Low & I. A Cooked Tour Through London , 1923. (with FWThomas)
• The Low & I Holiday Book , 1925.
• Sketches by Low , 1926.
• Lions & Lambs , 1928. (with Lync R. West)
• The Best of Low , 1930.
• Low's Russian Sketchbook , 1932. (with Kinsey Martin)
• Caricatures by Low , 1933.
• Low & Terry , 1934. (with H. Thorogood)
• The Modern Rake's Progress , 1934. (with R. West)
• Ye Madde designer , 1935.
• Low's Political Parade , 1936.
• Low Again , 1938.
• A Cartoon History of Our Times , 1939. (with Q. Howe)
• Europe Since Versailles , 1940.
• Europe at War , 1941.
• Low's War Cartoons , 1941.
• Low on the War , 1941.
• The World at War , 1941.
• A Cartoon History of the War , 1941.
• British Cartoonists, Caricaturists and Comic Artists (= Britain in Pictures Bd.?), 1942.
• A fine team - but could do with a dash of unity ... , 1945
• Years of Wrath , 1946.
• Low's Company , 1952.
• Low Visibility , 1953.
• Low's Cartoon History 1945-53 , 1953.
• Low's Autobiography , 1956.
• The Fearful Fifties , 1960.
• Years of Wrath. 1932-1945 , 1986. (posthumous)

literature

• M Brayant (Ed.): The Complete Colonel Blimp. 1991.
• Susan Foster: David Low. Kiwi cartoonist on Hitler's blacklist . NIE Books, Wellington, NZ 1996. ISBN 0-473-03671-1
• John Roberts: David Low. The influence of the New Zealand years .
• Colin Seymore-Ure: David Low. The roots of reputation . Secker & Warburg , London 1985. ISBN 0-436-44755-X
• Low and Lord Beaverbrook. Dissertation University of Kent at Canterbury, 1999.

Web links

Commons : David Low  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Biography - David Low . British Cartoon Archive,accessed December 30, 2015. 
• Political cartoons by David Low , Guardian

Individual evidence

1. ^ "Policy: it is agreed that you are to have complete freedom in the selection and treatment of subjectmatter for your cartoons and in the expression therein of the policies in which you believe." In practice, the agreement resulted in Low being allowed to draw, what he wanted, and was not required to deliver any kind of work on order that represented content / tendencies with which he did not identify. In return, Beaverbrook was free to refrain from publishing drawings that he did not agree to.
2. ^ David Low . In: Der Spiegel. December 22, 1949, accessed December 30, 2015 . 
3. ↑ The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography puts Low's fortune at £ 100,311 at the time of his death.