Died May 8, 1996 in Marfil, Mexico
Garth Williams (booklist) was an American illustrator and children's book author whose hey-day was in the forties and fifties but whose full range of work stretched over fifty years. He illustrated some of the most famous books of the 1950's. Despite the popularity, enduring appeal and wide range of his work, he inexplicably never won any of the major children's illustration prizes.
Reading might be likened to an opening flower in Spring. First you see the bud then the bloom then the full flowering. The work of Garth Williams serves as an exemplar of this.
A child's first picture books are studied with an intensity and narrow focus rarely recaptured in later years. Children often see things an adult never sees in a picture and invest that image with a power that passes completely beyond the attention of an adult. For all the intensity of their concentration, or perhaps because of that concentration, children are often not initially all that adapt at making connections between books. They might know what kind of story they like or what type of illustration, but it is an exceptional child that keys in on and recognizes that the author that wrote this book, also wrote that one or that the painter that did the illustrations for this book also did the ones for that book.
Later, when grown, that same child, now reading as an adult to their children, finds things in these books and across books that they missed the first time around. As a child I know I was exposed to the illustrations of Garth Williams (though I did not register it then) because I know which books I loved. When, as an adult, I then read those favorites to my children, I realized just how many of these books were illustrated by Garth Williams. If you had asked me to speculate about Williams and his life story, I would have guessed that he was quintessentially American, grew up in the Midwest and lived a quiet, unexceptional and productive life. To paraphrase Meat Loaf though, 'One out of three ain't bad.'
When researching this essay, I discovered that my blind assumptions about Williams' background could not have been more in error. He lived quite an eclectic and itinerant life. Williams was born in 1912 in New York City to English parents, both of whom were artists and he was raised in a very artistic environment: "Everybody in my house was always either painting or drawing." This over-familiarity with the artistic process was not a uniformly positive thing. Williams related one incident from his early childhood:
One day my father left his studio door open. I entered and found a pile of drawings he had ready to take to New York. I spent a long time looking at them and adding my art to them. I was not punished. 'I'm afraid he's going to be an artist,' my father said and removed my additions.
Williams' early years were spent on a farm in New Jersey. It was during these years that his fascination with animals, who were to later be the subject of most of his illustrations, blossomed. He later recalled this idyllic period.
I remember well most of those early years spent in New Jersey, especially when I was taken by the farmer, our landlord, on his lap to go harrowing or plowing. Or when we went driving out in his two-wheel buggy to Peterson or the Passaic River, crunching along a gravel road or splashing through puddles. I was a typical Huckleberry Finn, roaming barefoot around the farm, watching the farmer milk the cows by hand, or do his other shores.
Around 1917, Williams' parents moved to Canada where his mother was the arts mistress for a girl's finishing school in Ontario. In 1922, the family returned to Britain for Williams' education. He attended various private schools. Initially, Williams was most interested in becoming an architect, a long standing interest. As he approached his maturity, however, the world was plunged into the Great Depression and Williams decided that there appeared to be no demand whatsoever for architects so instead he entered the Westminster School of Art, graduating on to the Royal College of Art. He initially established a reputation as a portraitist and this, in turn, led to a focus on sculpture.
Graduating in 1934, Williams worked for a year as the headmaster of Luton Art School. He left this position and, in a feat of very fine timing, managed to win the British Prix de Rome for a sculpture. The prize was a two year scholarship to study art in Italy and Europe.
It was during these studies and travels that Williams met his first wife. Ultimately Williams married four times, having six children from these marriages.
Residing in Britain at the beginning of World War II, Williams sent his wife and their child to Canada and initially served as a part of the St. John's Ambulance Organization, rescuing people and recovering bodies from the wreckage of the bombing raids on London. Following a near miss by a bomb which badly damaged his spine, Williams returned to the US and New York.
With a peripatetic career of academic studies, teaching, sculpture and further studies, Williams had no clear path forward. He sought to become a cartoonist at the New Yorker magazine and did have a small selection of his work published. It was through this avenue that he became known to Katherine and E.B. White, both of The New Yorker. Simultaneously he pursued illustration opportunities with the big publishing houses. He approached the famous children's books editor Ursula Nordstrom at Harper & Row with his portfolio. She indicated that she was expecting a new manuscript shortly from one of her authors and that Williams was welcome to tryout some illustrations for that when she received it. When she did receive the manuscript from her author, E.B. White, he had already appended a note to it, "Try Garth Williams". Through this serendipitous turn of events, Williams was launched into a career illustrating children's books. The enduring classic, Stuart Little by E.B. White and illustrated by Garth Williams, appeared in 1945.
Williams had an astonishing run as a children's book illustrator, a career into which he happened to fall and which he apparently always regarded as a means to an end: the financial support of his lifestyle and his other artistic activities. He was the original, and still the iconic illustrator of those two masterpieces of children's literature by E.B. White, Stuart Little and Charlotte's Web. Though not the original illustrator of Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House series of books, he was commissioned to illustrate the full series of eight books and it is his work that has become the fixed version which most people encounter. Williams' work has occasionally been likened to that of two British artists, John Tenniel and E.H. Shepard, which is somewhat ironic. Both Tenniel and Shepard are in turn, forever linked with two sets of works: Tenniel with Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and Shepard with Milne's Winnie the Pooh. I say ironic because, had he only illustrated one set of classics, Williams might possibly be better known. Instead he illustrated one classic after another.
Beyond illustrating Stuart Little , Charlotte's Web, and the Little House books, Williams worked closely with other major authors of the period including most notably Margaret Wise Brown (including some of her most popular titles, Little Fur Family; Wait Till the Moon is Full; Mister Dog, the Dog Who Belonged to Himself; and The Sailor Dog), Charlotte Zolotow, Randall Jarrell, Else H. Minarik, Margery Sharp (the Miss Bianca series) and George Selden (including his classic series, The Cricket in Times Square). In addition to working with others, in the early 1950's Williams also authored and illustrated a series of lightweight but popular picture books for very young readers which included Baby Animals, Baby Farm Animals, The Golden Animal ABC, Baby's First Book, and The Rabbits' Wedding. Given the number of books he illustrated (nearly one hundred) and the prominence of the authors with whom he worked, it would be difficult to emerge from a reading childhood in the US without having comes across Williams' work at least once, whether you knew it or not.
Nearly half, or forty-eight, of all Garth's books were created in the first fifteen years of his career. There was a material drop in the number of books he produced in the sixties and especially in the seventies, eighties and nineties, but he kept on illustrating.
A seminal project in the early nineteen fifties was the commission to illustrate Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie series. Williams' travelled out to Missouri to meet and visit with Wilder and then travelled all across the Midwest visiting sites mentioned in Wilder's books and interviewing old neighbors. As Williams described it in an interview with Horn Book;
(We) set out by car, drove through the Smokies and reached Mansfield, Missouri, ten days later. Mrs. Wilder was working in her garden when we arrived and was without any doubt the Laura of her books. She was small and nimble. Her eyes sparkled with good humor and she seemed a good twenty years younger than her age.
Illustrating books is not just making pictures of the houses, the people and the articles mentioned by an author; the artist has to see everything with the same eyes. For example, an architect would have described the sod house on the bank of Plum Creek as extremely primitive, unhealthy and undesirable . . . But to Laura's fresh young eyes it was a pleasant house, surrounded by flowers and with the music of a running stream and rustling leaves.
She understood the meaning of hardship and struggle, of joy and work, of shyness and bravery. She was never overcome by drabness or squalor. She never glamorized anything; yet she saw the loveliness in everything. This was the way the illustrator had to follow – no glamorizing for him either; no giving everyone a permanent wave
Williams' style of illustration varied in emphasis with the circumstances of each author and the nature of the stories but there is an underlying style that is recognizable. He worked in ink and full color washes for the picture books for young children and in pen and ink for the longer works for independent readers such as Charlotte's Web. Williams loved drawing animals as opposed to people and in fact hesitated over the Little House project owing to the greater number of people in those stories as opposed to the books he was accustomed to illustrating which most often were solely or substantially based on animals. There is a soft furry attractive nature to his animal characterizations and he is a master of imparting a human expression on an animal's face without it being anything other than the animal it is supposed to be.
In the last thirty-five years of his life, Williams continued illustrating books, publishing about a half dozen titles a year or so. He purchased land in Mexico and rebuilt an old Spanish ruin there and divided his time between San Antonio and Mexico. He passed away on May 8th, 1996.
The Little Fur Family by Margaret Wise Brown and illustrated by Garth Williams Highly Recommended | |
Wait Till the Moon Is Full by Margaret Wise Brown and illustrated by Garth Williams Highly Recommended | |
Bedtime for Frances by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Garth Williams Highly Recommended | |
Mister Dog by Margaret Wise Brown and illustrated by Garth Williams Recommended | |
Baby Animals by Garth Williams Recommended | |
Baby Farm Animals by Garth Williams Recommendation | |
Baby's First Book by Garth Williams Recommended | |
Home for a Bunny by Margaret Wise Brown and illustrated by Garth Williams Recommended | |
My First Counting Book by Lilian Moore and illustrated by Garth Williams Recommended | |
Over and Over by Charlotte Zolotow and illustrated by Garth Williams Recommended | |
The Sailor Dog by Margaret Wise Brown and illustrated by Garth Williams Suggested | |
The Kitten Who Thought He Was a Mouse by Miriam Norton and illustrated by Garth Williams Suggested | |
The Family Under the Bridge by Natalie Savage Carlson and illustrated by Garth Williams Suggested | |
Rabbits-Wedding by Garth Williams Suggested | |
A Tale of Tails by Elizabeth H. MacPherson and illustrated by Garth Williams Suggested | |
Amigo by Byrd Baylor and illustrated by Garth Williams Suggested | |
The Giant Golden Book of Elves and Fairies by Jane Werner and illustrated by Garth Williams Suggested | |
Ride a Purple Pelican by Jack Prelutsky and illustrated by Garth Williams Suggested | |
Beneath a Blue Umbrella by Jack Prelutsky and illustrated by Garth Williams Suggested | |
Winter Days in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder and illustrated by Garth Williams Suggested |
Charlotte's Web by E. B. White and illustrated by Garth Williams Highly Recommended | |
Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder and illustrated by Garth Williams Highly Recommended | |
Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder and illustrated by Garth Williams Highly Recommended | |
Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder and illustrated by Garth Williams Highly Recommended | |
The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder and illustrated by Garth Williams Highly Recommended | |
By the Shores of Silver Lake by Laura Ingalls Wilder and illustrated by Garth Williams Highly Recommended | |
Little Town on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder and illustrated by Garth Williams Highly Recommended | |
On the Banks of Plum Creek by Laura Ingalls Wilder and illustrated by Garth Williams Highly Recommended | |
Stuart Little by E. B. White and illustrated by Garth Williams Recommended | |
These Happy Golden Years by Laura Ingalls Wilder and illustrated by Garth Williams Recommended | |
The Cricket in Times Square by George Selden and illustrated by Garth Williams Recommended | |
The Gingerbread Rabbit by Randall Jarrell and illustrated by Garth Williams Suggested | |
The First Four Years by Laura Ingalls Wilder and illustrated by Garth Williams Suggested | |
Chester Cricket's Pigeon Ride by George Selden and illustrated by Garth Williams Suggested | |
Harry Kitten and Tucker Mouse by George Selden and illustrated by Garth Williams Suggested | |
A Little House Christmas Treasury by Laura Ingalls Wilder and illustrated by Garth Williams Suggested |
Stuart Little written by E. B. White and illustrated by Garth Williams 1945
Little Fur Family written by Margaret Wise Brown and illustrated by Garth Williams 1946
The Great White Hills of New Hampshire written by Ernest Poole and illustrated by Garth Williams 1946
In Our Town written by Damon Runyon and illustrated by Garth Williams 1946
The Chicken Book: A Traditional Rhyme written and illustrated by Garth Williams 1946
Every Month Was May written by Evelyn S. Eaton and illustrated by Garth Williams 1947
The Golden Sleepy Book written by Margaret Wise Brown and illustrated by Garth Williams 1948
Wait till the Moon Is Full written by Margaret Wise Brown and illustrated by Garth Williams 1948
Robin Hood written by Henry Gilbert and illustrated by Garth Williams 1948
Tiny Library Volume 1 written by Dorothy Kunhardt and illustrated by Garth Williams 1948
Flossie and Bossie written by Eva LeGallienne and illustrated by Garth Williams 1948
Tiny Library Volume 2 written by Dorothy Kunhardt and illustrated by Garth Williams 1949
The Tall Book of Make-Believe written by Jane Werner Watson and illustrated by Garth Williams 1950
Elves and Fairies (anthology) written by Jane Werner Watson and illustrated by Garth Williams 1951
The Adventures of Benjamin Pink written and illustrated by Garth Williams 1951
Mister Dog, the Dog Who Belonged to Himself written by Margaret Wise Brown and illustrated by Garth Williams 1952
Charlotte's Web written by E. B. White and illustrated by Garth Williams 1952
Baby Animals written and illustrated by Garth Williams 1952
My Bedtime Book written by Margaret Wise Brown and illustrated by Garth Williams 1953
The Sailor Dog written by Margaret Wise Brown and illustrated by Garth Williams 1953
Animal Friends written by Jane Werner Watson and illustrated by Garth Williams 1953
Little House in the Big Woods written by Laura Ingalls Wilder and illustrated by Garth Williams 1953
Little House on the Prairie written by Laura Ingalls Wilder and illustrated by Garth Williams 1953
Farmer Boy written by Laura Ingalls Wilder and illustrated by Garth Williams 1953
The Long Winter written by Laura Ingalls Wilder and illustrated by Garth Williams 1953
By the Shores of Silver Lake written by Laura Ingalls Wilder and illustrated by Garth Williams 1953
Little Town on the Prairie written by Laura Ingalls Wilder and illustrated by Garth Williams 1953
On the Banks of Plum Creek written by Laura Ingalls Wilder and illustrated by Garth Williams 1953
These Happy Golden Years written by Laura Ingalls Wilder and illustrated by Garth Williams 1953
Baby Farm Animals written and illustrated by Garth Williams 1953
The Friendly Book written by Margaret Wise Brown and illustrated by Garth Williams 1954
The Kitten Who Thought He Was a Mouse written by Miriam Norton and illustrated by Garth Williams 1954
The Golden Animal ABC written and illustrated by Garth Williams 1954
The Golden Name Day written by Jennie D. Lindquist and illustrated by Garth Williams 1955
Baby's First Book written and illustrated by Garth Williams 1955
Home for a Bunny written by Margaret Wise Brown and illustrated by Garth Williams 1956
Three Little Animals written by Margaret Wise Brown and illustrated by Garth Williams 1956
My First Counting Book written by Lilian Moore and illustrated by Garth Williams 1956
The Happy Orpheline written by Natalie Savage Carlson and illustrated by Garth Williams 1957
Over and Over written by Charlotte Zolotow and illustrated by Garth Williams 1957
Three Bedtime Stories: "The Three Little Kittens," "The Three Bears," and "The Three Little Pigs," written by Anonymous and illustrated by Garth Williams 1958
The Family under the Bridge written by Natalie Savage Carlson and illustrated by Garth Williams 1958
The Rabbits' Wedding written and illustrated by Garth Williams 1958
Do You Know What I'll Do? written by Charlotte Zolotow and illustrated by Garth Williams 1958
A Brother for the Orphelines written by Natalie Savage Carlson and illustrated by Garth Williams 1959
The Little Silver House written by Jennie D. Lindquist and illustrated by Garth Williams 1959
The Rescuers written by Margery Sharp and illustrated by Garth Williams 1959
Emmett's Pig written by Mary Stolz and illustrated by Garth Williams 1959
Bedtime for Frances written by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Garth Williams 1960
The Cricket in Times Square written by George Selden and illustrated by Garth Williams 1960
A Tale of Tails written by Elizabeth H. MacPherson and illustrated by Garth Williams 1962
Miss Bianca written by Margery Sharp and illustrated by Garth Williams 1962
The Little Giant Girl and the Elf Boy written by Else H. Minarik and illustrated by Garth Williams 1963
Amigo written by Byrd Baylor Schweitzer and illustrated by Garth Williams 1963
The Turret written by Margery Sharp and illustrated by Garth Williams 1963
The Elves and Fairies Book written by Jane Werner and illustrated by Garth Williams 1963
The Sky Was Blue written by Charlotte Zolotow and illustrated by Garth Williams 1963
Bread-and-Butter Indian written by Anne Colver and illustrated by Garth Williams 1964
The Gingerbread Rabbit written by Randall Jarrell and illustrated by Garth Williams 1964
The Sailor Dog and Other Stories written by Margaret Wise Brown and illustrated by Garth Williams 1965
The Whispering Rabbit and Other Stories written by Margaret Wise Brown and illustrated by Garth Williams 1965
Miss Bianca in the Salt Mines written by Margery Sharp and illustrated by Garth Williams 1966
A Horn Book Calendar in Honor of Laura Ingalls Wilder written by Anonymous and illustrated by Garth Williams 1968
The Laura Ingalls Wilder Songbook: Favorite Songs from the "Little House" Books written by Eugenia Garson and illustrated by Garth Williams 1968
Push Kitty written by Jan Wahl and illustrated by Garth Williams 1968
Tucker's Countryside written by GeorgeSelden and illustrated by Garth Williams 1969
Bread-and-Butter Journey written by Anne Colver and illustrated by Garth Williams 1970
The First Four Years written by Laura Ingalls Wilder and illustrated by Garth Williams 1971
Lucky Mrs. Ticklefeather and Other Funny Stories written by D. Kunhardt and illustrated by Garth Williams 1973
Harry Cat's Pet Puppy written by GeorgeSelden and illustrated by Garth Williams 1974
Fox Eyes written by Margaret Wise Brown and illustrated by Garth Williams 1977
The Little House Cookbook: Recipes for a Pioneer Kitchen written by Barbara M. Walker and illustrated by Garth Williams 1979
The Little House Cookbook: Frontier Foods from Laura Ingalls Wilder's Classic Stories written by Barbara M. Walker and illustrated by Garth Williams 1979
Chester Cricket's Pigeon Ride written by GeorgeSelden and illustrated by Garth Williams 1981
Chester Cricket's New Home written by GeorgeSelden and illustrated by Garth Williams 1983
The Little House Diary written by Laura Ingalls Wilder and illustrated by Garth Williams 1985
Ride a Purple Pelican written by Jack Prelutsky and illustrated by Garth Williams 1986
Harry Kitten and Tucker Mouse written by GeorgeSelden and illustrated by Garth Williams 1986
The Old Meadow written by GeorgeSelden and illustrated by Garth Williams 1987
The Children's Books of Randall Jarrell written by Jerome Griswold and illustrated by Garth Williams 1988
Beneath a Blue Umbrella written by Jack Prelutsky and illustrated by Garth Williams 1990
King Emmett the Second written by Mary Stolz and illustrated by Garth Williams 1991
J.B.'s Harmonica written by John Sebastian and illustrated by Garth Williams 1993
The Little House Trivia Book written by Carolyn Strom Collins and illustrated by Garth Williams 1996
A Little House Christmas: Holiday Stories from the House Books written by Laura Ingalls Wilder and illustrated by Garth Williams 1997
Little House Sisters: Collected Stories from the Little House Books written by Laura Ingalls Wilder and illustrated by Garth Williams 1997
Golden Books Treasury of Elves and Fairies with Assorted Pixies, Mermaids, Brownies, Witches, and Leprechauns written by Jane Warner and illustrated by Garth Williams 1999
Salutations: Wit and Wisdom from Charlotte's Web written by E. B. White and illustrated by Garth Williams 1999
Inside Laura's Little House written by Carolyn Strom Collins and illustrated by Garth Williams 2000
The World of Little House written by Carolyn Strom Collins and illustrated by Garth Williams 2000
A Garth Williams Treasury of Best Loved Golden Books written and illustrated by Garth Williams 2001
Self-Portrait: Garth Williams written and illustrated by Garth Williams
Winter Days in the Big Woods written by Laura Ingalls Wilder and illustrated by Garth Williams
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