EXTRACTS: Illustrators Issue 5 © 2013 The Book Palace (96 PAGES in Full edition)

94 The Bookshelf For devotees of Janet and Anne Grahame Johnstone’s art, it may come as a surprise that their mother was also one of two highly talented sisters, who took the art world by storm in the 1920s and created a cult of celebrity around themselves long before Facebook and the Twittersphere became the default setting for self promotional networking. Kelleway’s text follows the lives and careers of Doris and Anna Zinkeisen as they set about applying their talents to portraiture, costume design, theatre design, and work in the film industry. Their talent and boundless energy was inherited by their children and Kelleway’s researches follow the lives of the Zinkleisen sisters as well as their children and while Janet and Anne Grahame Johnstone carved out enviable careers for themselves as illustrators, their cousin Julia Heseltine (Anna Zinkeisen’s daughter) became a noted portrait painter, as well as an accomplished landscape artist. The author has done an admirable job in gaining access to friends and family of these remarkable artists. The book contains a generous selection of art and photographs which adds further lustre to this fascinating tale. — Peter Richardson Highly Desirable—The Zinkeisen Sisters by Philip Kelleway Hard-bound 290 pages. Leiston Press £47.75 Lifestyle Illustration of the 50s by Rian Hughes & David Roach Softbound 512 pages. Goodman Fiell £19.20/$33.50 l illustrators is also available in the USA from budplant.com The Fairest One Of All by J. B. Kaufman. Hard-bound 320 pages. Aurum Press £22.40/$46.00 Its hard to imagine just how mind blowing the advent of the first full length animated feature was for the people that created it, and the crowds that queued for hours outside cinemas to witness the arrival of a film that would have seemed impossible a few years earlier. J. B. Kaufman’s text manages to plunge the reader back into those heady days. With recourse to the minutes of Disney storyboard meetings and interviews with the key personnel, the story of how Walt Disney and his team of young artists, actors, writers and musicians managed to create an animated film that has had the power to captivate generations of audiences makes for a truly compelling read. Added to the reading experience is all the extra source material that Kaufman has included, which all add to the sense that while this book carries its learning lightly, putting across its story in an engaging and accessible manner, it is nevertheless the product of many years of unstinting research. The book itself, is well designed and the artwork covering all aspects of the production of ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’ adds extra allure to a tale well told. — Peter Richardson It is a colourful book. I was there back in the fifties commissioning the artists and designing fiction pages, so I wanted to like the book. I don’t. The images were scanned from British magazines, so it is unfortunate that the editor has subjectively chosen so many works by Americans, and neglected some of the best English illustrators. The page designs are monotonous, as if they are trying to bore the readers into submission, and the most ridiculous thing that I have ever seen in publishing is on page ten, where the whole page is devoted to a photograph of the blank back of a sheet of illustration board! Hughes’ decision to invite Anita Virgil, an American illustrator’s widow, to describe how an artist works was bizarre, especially as I had arranged to take David Roach to lunch with Walter Wyles, a leading British illustrator in the fifties, so that he could interview him about his life and working practices. Roach didn’t take up the offer. Hughes recently said on Facebook “Love to do more books. Lots of ideas. I may have to reexamine [sic] the publisher options, though… open to offers” I can hear the champagne corks popping at publishers Goodman Fiell. — Bryn Havord