William Heath Robinson

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William Heath Robinson (born May 31, 1872 in London , † September 13, 1944 ) was a British caricaturist, illustrator, writer and set designer. He became known for his comical drawings of machines, the complexity of which bears no relation to their banal use. Robinson is also considered one of the most important book illustrators of Art Nouveau.

'The Ingenious Pick-pockets of Hampstead Lane'

life and work

An illustration for the Poem 'Eldorado' ('Gaily bedight ...') of Edgar Allan Poe

He was the son of the illustrator and wood cutter Thomas Robinson. He received his education from 1887 at the Islington School of Art, and briefly in 1890 at the Royal Academy of Arts . Initially turned to landscape painting , he turned, like his two brothers Charles Robinson and Thomas Heath Robinson , to the illustration of books. His first commissions were Don Quixote in 1897 and Arabian Nights in 1899. A volume of poems by Edgar Allan Poe followed in 1900 , as his later illustration of the collected works of François Rabelais was characterized by graphic brilliance and precisely generated eeriness. His numerous book illustrations also included pictures from the works of John Bunyan and William Shakespeare ( A Midsummeright's Dream 1914).

the baby is being kidnapped by a bird
one of the funny machines
First lessons: running

With two children's books, The Adventures of Uncle Lubin in 1902 and Bill the Minder in 1912, Robinson proved that he was as talented as an author for children as he was an illustrator. His pictures here are like caricatures and grotesquely funny. His stories are just as bizarre and kept so much in the style of English nonsense literature that one can assume that it was probably not only children who were intended as his reading audience. Now the first forerunners of his strange machines appear. The title character sets out to find his nephew, kidnapped by a bird, a baby he should have supervised. For the pursuit, he improvises an airplane, a tethered balloon, a sailing boat and a submarine, and also uses numerous tricks, such as being able to defeat a sea snake with salt strewn on its tail. In Bill the Minder , he tells 15 crazy stories and illustrates them as well. Finally, the inventions of a “mad scientist” and at the same time brilliant professor found in Norman Hunter's The Incredible Adventures of Professor Branestawm (1933) the congenial illustrator in Robinson. His autobiography My Line of Life was published in 1938.

Many of his drawings have appeared in The Sketch , The Bystander , The Strand Magazine and The Illustrated London News , among others .

Heath Robinson Apparatus

At W. Heath Robinson there are countless devices that represent absurd aids for everyday tasks, such as a rationing machine for tea or a twisted launch tube for tennis balls, which directs the ball in an unpredictable trajectory towards the player in order to train him . What these devices have in common is that the design effort is disproportionate to the benefit.

The devices devised by Robinson are also noticeable because they are assembled from arbitrary and seemingly absurd objects and materials. They give the impression that they were found on a bulky waste heap. Pieces of wood, household items, knotted ropes, gears, balls, fish hooks and much more can be found in a colorful combination.

Cultural meaning

The grave of William Heath Robinson in East Finchley Cemetery

Heath Robinson became the supplier of a term in the English language: "Heath Robinson contraption" or simply "Heath Robinson" describes as a noun, with his peculiar machines and apparatus with which he parodistically amused himself more and more of the accompanying technology or adjective used, an ingenious or laughably overcomplicated mechanism.

It found its first documented use as early as 1912, when a member of the English lower house described an Austrian air show as an event carried out with "newfangled Heath Robinson apparatus" (literally "Heath Robinson contraptions" ). The expression has also been recorded in the OED since 1917 .

Trivia

Deciphering machine

During the Second World War, a special machine was developed in the research department of the British Post Office in Dollis Hill to decipher the German Lorenz key machine and then used in the British office in Bletchley Park . Due to its complicated structure, the machine was given the name Heath Robinson based on his fantastic equipment. The Heath Robinson was considered slow and unreliable; however, it served to verify the theorems of the developer Max Newman as the forerunner of the Colossus decryption machine.

Own works

Classic illustration work (selection)

  • The Poems of Edgar Allan Poe , London New York (Chiswick Press) 1900
  • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, The Life and Conduct of the Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote de la Mancha , London (Sands & Co.) 1903
  • William Shakespeare's Comedy of a Midsummeright's Dream , London (Constable) 1914
  • Hans Christian Andersen, Märchenschatz , Munich (Georg W. Dietrich) 1929

Children's books (selection)

  • The Adventures of Uncle Lubin , London (Grant Richards) 1902
  • Bill the Minder , London (Constable & Co.) 1912
  • Vernaleken, William Heath Robinson's Book of Goblins , London (Hutchinson & Co.) 1934

"Heath Robinson" machines (selection)

  • Absurdities London (Duckworth) 1934
  • Let's Laugh: A Book of Humorous Inventions, Contrived London (Duckworth) 1939
  • Heath Robinson at War London (Methuen) 1942
  • Heath Robinson Contraptions , London (Duckworth) New York (Overlook) 2007

Literature on WHR

Books

  • Percy V. Bradshaw: The Art of the Illustrator: W. Heath Robinson and his Work , The Press Art School, 1918
  • William Heath Robinson, My Line of Life (autobiography) London (Blackie) 1938
  • HB Grimsditch: William Heath Robinson in Dictionary of National Biography 1941-1950 , pp. 729-730
  • GW Langston Day: The Life and Art of W. Heath Robinson , Herbert Joseph, 1947
  • John Lewis: Heath Robinson Artist and Comic Genius , Barnes and Noble, 1973
  • Leo John De Freitas: The Fantastic Paintings of Charles and William Heath Robinson , Peacock / Bantam, 1976
  • David Larkin (Eds.): Charles and William Heath Robinson , Constable, 1976 ISBN 978-0-09-461480-2
  • Geoffrey Beare: The Illustrations of W. Heath Robinson , Alacrity, 1983, ISBN 978-0-907961-02-4
  • Geoffrey Beare and others: W. Heath Robinson (1872-1944) - The Inventive Comic Genius of Our Age , Chris Beetles Ltd., 1987
  • Ian Rogerson: The Robinson Brothers , Manchester Polytechnic Library, 1987
  • Geoffrey Beare: Brothers Robinson , Chris Beetles Ltd., 1992, ISBN 978-1-871136-30-2
  • Geoffrey Beare: Heath Robinson Advertising , Bellew Pub. Co., 1992, ISBN 978-1-85725-039-8
  • James Hamilton: William Heath Robinson , Pavillion Books Ltd., London 1992, ISBN 1-85793-604-3
  • Ian Chilvers: Robinson, William Heath . In: A Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Art . Oxford University Press, 1998.

items

  • Anonymous : Mr. W. Heath Robinson and his Work in The Strand Magazine , July 1908, pp. 41 ff.
  • Anonymus : A Maker of Absurdities in London Magazine , August 1908, p. 626
  • W. Heath Robinson: How I Spend Christmas in The Bookman , Dec 1909, 138
  • Anonymous : Photographic Interviews No. V - A Famous "Sketch" Artist: Mr. Heath Robinson in The Sketch , Jan. 4, 1911, pp. 399-400
  • Anonymus : Christmas Leaves from the Publishers in Illustrated London News , December 7, 1912, p. 852
  • AE Johnson: W. Heath Robinson in The Atheneum , June 7, 1913, p. 629
  • AE Johnson: The Line Drawings of W. Heath Robinson in The Studio , May 1916, p. 223 ff.
  • W. Heath Robinson: In the Days of My Youth in TP's and Cassell's Weekly , April 18, 1925, pp. 956, 964, 966
  • AL Baldry: The Art of Mr. Heath Robinson in The Studio , May 1925, p. 242 ff.
  • Christopher Mann: Heath Robinson as Advertisement Designer in Commercial Art , June 1927, p. 256 ff.
  • Fenn Sherie: Joking Apart in Pearson's Magazine , December 1930, pp. 579 ff.
  • Anonymous : The Heath Robinson "Ideal Home" at Olympia in Decoration , April 1934, p. 7 In the 7 ff.
  • Maurice Sly, How They Make You Laugh in The Sunday Statesman Magazine Section , Aug. 11, 1938, p. 18
  • Ian Coster: Interview with William Heath Robinson in London Opinion , August 1940
  • Anonymous : Mr. Heath Robinson - Humorous Artist [Obituary] in The Times , September 14, 1944
  • GW Langston Day: The Gadget King in Everybody's Weekly , March 31, 1945, pp. 8-9
  • Anonymous : Heath Robinson's Contraptions in Illustrated London News , May 1972, pp. 35 ff.
  • Lesley Garner: Magic in his Madness in The Sunday Times Magazine , June 4, 1972, front cover and pp. 14-22
  • Melvyn Horder: The World of Heath Robinson in Times Saturday Review , July 21, 1973

Others

  • Cookham Festival: The Cookham Family Robinson , Cookham, Berkshire, 1971
  • Andrew Greg: William Heath Robinson , Introduction to the Exhibition Catalog, Portsmouth City Museum, 1975
  • James Hamilton: William Heath Robinson , Introduction to the Exhibition Catalog, Sheffield, Mappin Art Gallery, 1977

See also

Web links

Commons : William Heath Robinson  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Langston Day, p. 136 (see above, Books on WHR)
  2. ^ "Heath Robinson" in "Oxford Dictionaries", April 2010, Oxford University Press - http://oxforddictionaries.com/view/entry/m_en_gb0370150 (accessed December 31, 2010)
  3. ↑ Bletchley Park - National Codes Center - http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/content/machines.rhtm (accessed December 31, 2010)
personal data
SURNAME Robinson, William Heath
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Robinson, Heath
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English draftsman, illustrator and caricaturist
DATE OF BIRTH May 31, 1872
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH September 13, 1944
Place of death London