EXTRACTS: Illustrators issue 26 © 2019 The Book Palace (96 PAGES in Full edition)

92 Born in Liverpool in 1908, the son of an established ship broker who was also the Honorary Portuguese Vice Consul, he demonstrated a precocious talent. By the age of ten he had won both a gold star and a gold medal in consecutive years in the prestigious Princess Louise Drawing Competition. After a public school education, first at The Leas School in Hoylake and later at St Edward’s School in Oxford, he spent three years at the Liverpool School of Arts and Craft. Moving to London at the end of his studies he was soon sharing a studio with Eliot Hodgkin and Angus Grant and the trio exhibited together under the name The Gresse Street Group. They were all later to join The Pandemonium Group founded by Victor Reinganum and Nicholas Bentley and present their work at the Beaux Arts Gallery in Bruton Place. Whatever ambitions he might have had to develop as a fine artist, the need to make a living led him initially into magazine and advertising illustration and, from 1932 onwards, dust jacket design. Throughout the 1930’s he was a well known social figure in London. His exclusive “King Club” held an annual birthday ball in Whistler’s former studio in Tite Street, Chelsea. On these occasions Barbosa would play the