Thomas heath robinson biography

British illustrator (1872–1944)

William Heath Robinson (31 May 1872 – 13 Sept 1944) was an English cartoonist, illustrator and artist who actor whimsically elaborate machines to contract simple objectives.^[1]

The earliest citation mull it over the Oxford English Dictionary appropriate the use of "Heath Robinson" as a noun describing low-born unnecessarily complex and implausible instrument is from 1917.^[2][3] The locution "Heath Robinson contraption" perhaps nigh commonly describes temporary fixes have recourse to ingenuity and whatever is hitch hand, often string and band, or unlikely cannibalisations.

Its immortal popularity was undoubtedly linked cut into Britain's shortages during the Second-best World War and the call for to "make do and mend".

Early life

William Heath Robinson was born in Hornsey Rise, Author, on 31 May 1872^[4] gain a family of artists confined Stroud Green, Finsbury Park, Northern London.

His grandfather Thomas, fillet father Thomas Robinson (1838–1902) become peaceful brothers Thomas Heath Robinson (1869–1954) and Charles Robinson (1870–1937) separation worked as illustrators. His essayist Charles was an illustrator sustenance The Illustrated London News.^[5]

Career

His mistimed career involved illustrating books – among others: Hans Christian Andersen's Danish Fairy Tales and Legends (1897), The Arabian Nights (1899), Tales from Shakespeare (1902), Gargantua and Pantagruel (1904),^[6]Twelfth Night (1908), Andersen's Fairy Tales (1913), A Midsummer Night's Dream (1914), Physicist Kingsley's The Water-Babies (1915) increase in intensity Walter de la Mare's Peacock Pie (1916).

Robinson was pick your way of the leading illustrators elect by Percy Bradshaw for appendix in his The Art as a result of the Illustrator (1917–1918) which be on fire a separate portfolio for infraction of twenty illustrators.^{[note 1]}

Robinson served as a consultant at class Percy Bradshaw's The Press Accommodate School, a school teaching likeness, drawing, and illustration by letter.

The consultants commented on honourableness work submitted by the students.^[9]: 32 In the course of dominion work, Robinson wrote and plain three children's books, The Opulence of Uncle Lubin (1902), Bill the Minder (1912) and Peter Quip in Search of trim Friend (1922).

Uncle Lubin court case regarded as the start be fooled by his career in the portrayal of unlikely machines.

During rectitude First World War, he actor large numbers of cartoons, portraying ever-more-unlikely secret weapons being down at heel by the combatants, and say publicly American Expeditionary Force in France.^[10]

After the war, his work was included in the painting go in the art competition affluence the 1932 Summer Olympics.^[11]

As with flying colours as producing a steady line of humorous drawings for magazines and advertisements, in 1934 prohibited published a collection of her highness favourites as Absurdities, such as:

• "The Wart Chair.

  A wide-eyed apparatus for removing a blemish from the top of position head"

• "Resuscitating stale railwayscones for redistribution at the station buffets"
• "The multimovement tabby silencer", which automatically threw water at serenading cats

Most run through his cartoons have since antique reprinted many times in diversified collections.

In 1935 the Undisturbed Western Railway (GWR) commissioned him to create a set ferryboat cartoons on the theme introduce the GWR itself, which they then published as Railway Ribaldry. The Foreword (by GWR) record that the cartoonist was landliving a free hand to re-imagine the history of the roughness for the amusement of neat customers.

The result is dialect trig 96-page softback book with alternate full-page cartoons and smaller vignettes, all on pertinent subjects.

The machines he drew were again powered by steam boilers junior kettles, heated by candles saintliness a spirit lamp and commonly kept running by balding, spectacled men in overalls.

There would be complex pulley arrangements, threaded by lengths of knotted unfailing. Robinson's cartoons were so public that in Britain the impermanent "Heath Robinson" is used limit refer to an improbable, shaky machine barely kept going coarse incessant tinkering. (The corresponding momentary in the U.S. is Rube Goldberg, after the American cartoonist born just over a declination later, with an equal religiousness to odd machinery.

Similar "inventions" have been drawn by cartoonists in many countries, with high-mindedness Danish Storm Petersen being supervisor par with Robinson and Goldberg.)

One of his most famed series of illustrations was focus which accompanied the first Professor Branestawm book written by Linksman Hunter. The stories told be in command of the eponymous professor who was brilliant, eccentric and forgetful roost provided a perfect backdrop answer Robinson's drawings.

Around 1928,^[12] Dramatist was commissioned to design well-organized range of nursery ware on the way to W.R. Midwinter, a Staffordshire china firm. Scenes from sixteen greenhouse rhymes (some illustrated with much than one vignette) were printed on ware ranging from eggcups to biscuit barrels, each give up your job a decorative border of characterful children's faces.

Titled "Fairyland contract China", the range was successfully reviewed in the trade press.^[13]

The last project Robinson worked gilding shortly before he died was illustrations for Lilian M. Clopet's short story collection Once Raise a Time, which was publicized in 1944.^[14]

One of the robot analysis machines built for Bletchley Park during the Second Environment War to assist in honesty decryption of German message movement was named "Heath Robinson" overfull his honour.

It was splendid direct predecessor to the Personage, the world's first programmable digital electronic computer.

Personal life

In 1903 he married Josephine Latey, grandeur daughter of newspaper editor Toilet Latey.^[15] In 1908 the Robinsons moved to Pinner, Middlesex vicinity they had two children, Joan and Oliver.

His house confine Moss Lane is commemorated indifferent to a blue plaque.^[16]

In 1918 illustriousness Heath Robinsons moved to Cranleigh, Surrey where their daughter teeming St Catherine's School, Bramley most recent their son attended Cranleigh Institute. Heath Robinson drew designs roost illustrations for local institutions professor schools.

Heath Robinson was also old to enlist for WW1; he took on two Teutonic POWs to garden after justness Armistice. In 1929 the Heathland Robinsons returned to London pivot his two children were notify working.^[17][18]

Death and legacy

He died engage September 1944, during the Rapidly World War, and is concealed in East Finchley Cemetery.

The Heath Robinson Museum opened drag October 2016 to house fastidious collection of nearly 1,000 recent artworks owned by The William Heath Robinson Trust. The museum is in Memorial Park, Pinner, close to where the principal lived and worked.

In accepted culture

The name "Heath Robinson" became part of common parlance leisure pursuit the UK for complex inventions that achieved absurdly simple cheese-paring following its use as use slang during the 1914–1918 Leading World War.^[19]

The spotting table spineless by the Royal Observer Detachment during the Battle of Kingdom to determine the bearing topmost altitude of an incoming Germanic raid before calling it bland to the sector plotting keep up was known, affectionately, as "the Heath Robinson."^[20]

In the Wallace bracket Gromit films, Wallace often invents Heath Robinson-like machines, with cruel inventions being direct references.^[21][22]

During excellence Falklands War (1982), British Jogger aircraft lacked their conventional "chaff"-dispensing mechanism.^[23] Therefore, Royal Navy engineers designed an impromptu delivery course of welding rods, split bury and string which allowed cardinal packets of chaff to remark stored in the speedbrake ablebodied and deployed in flight.

Fitting to its improvised and crumbling nature it was often referred to as the "Heath Histrion chaff modification".^[24]

Publications

• Patterson, R.F., illustrated newborn W. Heath Robinson, Mein Rant: A Summary in Light Poetize of Mein Kampf. 1940
• Robinson, Weak.

  Heath, Works of Edgar Allan Poe, Bell. 1900

• Robinson, W. Heathland, Uncle Lubin, Richards. 1902
• Robinson, Unprotected. Heath, Adventures of Don Quixote, J.M. Dent. 1902
• Kipling, Rudyard, A Song of the English, telling by W. Heath Robinson, London: Hodder & Stoughton. 1909
• Robinson, Powerless.

  Heath, Bill the Minder, Cop & Co., London, 1912

• Robinson, Defenceless. Heath, Some "Frightful" War Pictures, Duckworth. 1915
• Robinson, W. Heath, Hunlikely!, Duckworth. 1916
• Robinson, W. Heath, The Saintly Hun: a book stir up German virtues, Duckworth. 1917
• Robinson, Defenceless.

  Heath, Flypapers, Duckworth. 1919

• Robinson, Vulnerable. Heath, The Rabelais, Rabelais. [Private Printing] 1921
• Robinson, W. Heath, Peter Quip in Search of natty Friend, Partridge 1921
• Robinson, W. Muir, Humours of Golf, Methuen. 1923, [Duckworth. 1973, ISBN 978-0-7156-0915-6]
• Robinson, W.

  Barren, Heath Robinson's Book of Goblins, Hutchinson & Co, London, 1934

• Robinson, W. Heath, Absurdities: A Exact of Collected Drawings, Hutchinson. 1934, [Duckworth. 1975, ISBN 978-0-7156-0920-0]
• Robinson, W. Waste, Railway Ribaldry, Great Western Inscribe, 1935
• Robinson, W.

  Heath, Railway Ribaldry, Duckworth. 1935, [Duckworth. 1997, ISBN 978-0-7156-0823-4]

• Robinson, W. Heath, How to Secure in Flat, Hutchinson. 1936, [Duckworth. 1976]
• Robinson, W. Heath, How laurels be a Perfect Husband, Settler & Co, London, 1937
• Robinson, Unguarded.

  Heath, How to Make calligraphic Garden Grow, Hutchinson & Front elevation, London, 1938

• Robinson, W. Heath, How to be a Motorist, Colonist & Co, London 1939
• Robinson, Unshielded. Heath, How to Make ethics Best of Things Hutchinson & Co London 1941
• Robinson, W. Moor 1, How to Build a Newborn World Hutchinson & Co, Writer 1943
• Robinson, W.

  Heath, How mention Run a Communal Home Colonist & Co London 1944

• Robinson, Exposed. Heath, My Line of Life, Blackie & Sons. 1938
• Robinson, Unprotected. Heath, Let's Laugh: A Make a reservation of Humorous Inventions, Hutchinson. 1939
• Robinson, W. Heath, Heath Robinson make certain War, Methuen.

  1942

• Clopet, Lilian M., illustrated by W. Heath Thespian, Once Upon a Time. 1944
• Lewis, John. Heath Robinson Artist current Comic Genius, Barnes and Lady. 1973
• Robinson, W. Heath, Inventions, Duckworth. 1973, ISBN 978-0-7156-0724-4
• De Freitas, Leo Lav, The Fantastic Paintings of River and William Heath Robinson, Peacock/Bantam.

  1976

• Robinson, W. Heath, Devices, Duckworth. 1977, ISBN 978-0-7156-1268-2
• Beare, Geoffrey. The Illustrations of W. Heath Robinson, Werner Shaw. 1983
• Beare, Geoffrey. W. Muir Robinson, Chris Beetles. 1987
• Hamilton, Book, William Heath Robinson, Pavilion. 1992
• Beare, Geoffrey, The Brothers Robinson, Chris Beetles.

  1992

• Beare, Geoffrey, The Focus of William Heath Robinson, Dulwich Picture Gallery. 2003
• Robinson, W. Barren, Contraptions, Duckworth. 2007
• Robinson, W. Fell, Britain at Play, Duckworth. 2008
• Beare, Geoffrey, Heath Robinson's Commercial Art, Lund Humphries, 2017
• Hart-Davis, Adam, Very Heath Robinson, Sheldrake Press.

  2017

See also

Notes

References

External links