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

94 Grand Duke, his lifelong friend Rex Harrison would play his Aide-de-Camp and Cecil Beaton would take the photographs. All the guests would be in costumes designed by Barbosa. Throughout a career of more than sixty years Barbosa produced a wide variety of work and demonstrated a complete command of his art. His speciality, arms, armour and military uniforms, was called upon again and again by London publishers and publications such as Radio Times . His drawing skills, demonstrated at an early age, were to reach a peak in his late seventies with his illustrations for ‘Georgette Heyer’s Regency England’ by Teresa Chris, published by Sidgwick & Jackson in 1989. It has been suggested to me that Arthur Barbosa felt some disappointment at never being accepted as a fine artist in the academic sense. If that is so, it is in my opinion a completely unwarranted response. As an illustrator and designer he left behind him a body of interesting and varied work, all of it of a high standard of both creativity and technical excellence and at a level of competence it is difficult to find in today’s so-called ‘fine art’. However the art establishment may wish to define him, Arthur Barbosa was an Artist with a capital A. l l Lawrence Blackmore is also the author of the book ‘Barbosa,TheManWhoDrew Flashman’, an insight into the artist’s life and work, published by Book Palace Books.