Colourful Moths of the World (Signed) (Original)
Medium: Gouache on Board
Size: 14" x 20" (360mm x 500mm)
Date: 1971
Signature: Signed by artist lower right
Code: Davis5Moths
This is the Signed unique original Gouache painting by Reginald B Davis.
The featured creatures are The Atlas, one of the largest which comes from India as does the Cricula. The Brahma actually lives in Japan, the IO from North America, while the Comet with it's two long tails finds its home in Madagascar.
Original artwork for illustration on p81 of Tell Me Why Annual 1972.
- Artist Biography
Reginald Ben Davis (10 December 1907 - December 1998; UK)
Reginald Ben Davis was a British illustrator and comic artist, best known for his wildlife illustrations.
Davis was a commercial artist before the Second World War working for Byron Studios. After the war he became a regular artist for School Friend, drawing the adventures of castaway schoolgirl 'Jill Crusoe'. Amongst his other strips for the same paper were 'Phantom Ballerina' and 'Penny of Maywood Stables'.
After working as a commercial illustrator, Davis became a regular cover artist and contributor of adventurous girls' comics for the Amalgamated Press magazine School Friend during the 1950s. In serials like 'Jill Crusoe, 'Jon of the Jungle', Castaway' (1950-1959) and 'Katy of Cedar Creek' (1957-1960) he could already show his skills in drawing flora and fauna, and later illustrated text stories for Girls' Crystal in the early 1960s. From 1962 he concentrated on colour illustration work and only occasionally returned to comic strips.
He later fine-tuned his flora and fauna skills as a prominent illustrator of nature sections in the magazines Treasure (1963-1971) and Look and Learn (1970-1982). Some of his Look and Learn illustrations were collected in Animal Partnerships by Maurice Burton (1969).
In the 1970s he concentrated on illustrating wildlife books. Davis lived in Liphook, Hampshire, where he died in late 1998, aged 90.
Source: Look and Learn; Lambiek