John Hassall was born in the coastal town Walmer in Kent in 1868.
His family were quite well off and following his private education Hassall twice attempted - and
twice failed - the entrance exam for The Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst.
Not long after he left England for Manitoba, Canada to run a farm with his brother Owen,
and although his brother stayed there John returned to London two years later.
Although he'd received no formal art training Hassall had always enjoyed drawing since
childhood, and in 1890 he submitted some of his illustrations to the Graphic magazine.
A few of them were actually published and this minor success encouraged him to study art,
initially in Antwerp for 6 months before moving on to Paris and the Academie Julian in 1894.
While in Paris he met and subsequently married fellow student Isabella Dingwall and on their
return to England they rented a house in London's Notting Hill.
A year later his first poster for the play The French maid was published,
and this commission effectively launched a career of over half a century.
In the 3 year period Between 1896 and 1899 alone, he produced over 600 poster designs.
The great majority of his posters at this time were for theatrical productions staged
in London and they were seen on just about every vertical surface across the city.
Early on the Parisian Belle Époque influence was clear to see in Hassall's style, with elements of
the light touch of Jules Chéret in his depiction of pretty girls, alongside the more formal
graphic outlined approach of Alphonse Mucha. Although his theatrical work dominated at this
early stage of his career there were other examples which demonstrated just how well
his style and humour could persuade the public to buy all manner of household products too.
Hassall also worked with some success as a painter throughout his career, but it
would be book and advertising work which would make his reputation and most of his livelihood.
Unlike others this imbalance didn't appear to bother him in the least.
His comparatively minimal graphic style was considered eminently suitable for both children's
books and humorous books for adults, and with its general absence of hatching and application
of flat or flattish colour contained by strong expressive lines Hassall was
in the vanguard of those who would modernise commercial illustration in the 20th century.
In 1900 his illustrated tale of Good Queen Bess,
written by David Nutt was published. And this series of colour scenes of sometimes
remarkable complexity demonstrated Hassall's talent not only for composition and expressive
figure work but also for creating subtly humorous sequential narratives.
But tragically 1900 was also the year his wife died during childbirth at the age of 34.
So now Hassall, still in his early 30s, was a widower bringing up 3 small children.
Luckily, the financial success he had already enjoyed meant that he
was able to employ nannies and other domestic help to run the household.
1901 saw the publication of By the Way Ballads, a collection of comic
verses with accompanying monochrome pen and ink spot illustrations by Hassall.
In the following year his first collaboration with the writer G. E. Farrow was published,
and this comical alphabet book featured a series of particularly expressive generic caricatures
of British types from across the social spectrum, printed in line and flat colour.
They teamed up again for the book Absurd Ditties in 1903,
and this book proved to be equally popular with the public.
In that year Hassall married Constance Webb, and In 1904 he collaborated again
with G. E. Farrow for the Round the World ABC, a book of illustrated limericks which
provided him with the opportunity to create many comical national and racial stereotypes,
some of which would now be too offensive to print, but at the time were considered harmless fun.
And a year later Double Dutch, another book of verse for children,
was also published and played greatly to his strengths as
a particularly articulate character designer, and master of simplicity.
Hassall was now at the height of his popularity and productivity and
in addition to the immense volume of illustrated books he was producing he
continued to be prolific in the creation of posters, and by this time demand for
his advertising work for household items was every bit as great as for theatre publicity.
Which makes it even more incredible that In 1906 he also opened his own School of Art and
Poster Design with his friend and fellow illustrator Dudley Hardy in Kensington.
The illustration of nursery thyme books was ongoing throughout his career,
and the many cheerful graphically satisfying images he produced were
also reprinted and republished in other collections with enormous popular success.
In 1907 Hassall produced a series of painted colour images which were displayed in the foyer
of a London theatre to celebrate a Christmas production of J. M. Barrie's peter pan. Each
image used a particularly extreme landscape format, but he met the challenge with absolute
success and created a series of engrossing and well composed moments from the story.
by this point Hassall was considered to be the leading poster artist in Britain, and his
reputation led to a commission in 1908 to create a couple of posters for the London Underground.
Both these posters were very popular with the public and revolutionised
all future graphics produced by London transport.
This was also the year that he created the poster which is now
considered his most iconic and enduring work. He'd already created several posters for other
holiday resorts but it was his jolly fisherman poster for the East Coast resort Skegness which
would quickly become his most celebrated creation. This cheerful character dancing
along the shore quickly became synonymous with the resort, and continues to be their mascot.
A year later in 1909 he created a series of imaginative covers for the magazine Printer's Pie,
using the nursery rhyme character Simple Simon as the common thread in his designs.
And in the same year his edition of Mother Goose’s Nursery Rhymes was also published,
with yet another lightly comic and imaginative visualisation of the children's rhymes to feed
what seemed to be an insatiable appetite for such books in Britain at the time.
in 1910 he created the first poster featuring the Kodak camera girl, and she would continue
to be a feature of their advertising, although subsequently taken on by other illustrators.
His presence in humorous and children's books continued undiminished, and he had particular
success with various fairy tales from The Brothers Grimm and Hans Andersen in 1912.
And there was no decline in his popularity as a poster artist,
although it must be conceded that neither his humour directed at black people or his work
attempting to deny women the vote would win him any popularity contests in contemporary society.
His art school closed at the outbreak of the First World War. at 46 years old he was
considered too old to enlist, so his commercial activity continued apparently undiminished.
He also created various forms of propaganda and patriotic material during the war years
and . Most significantly in 1916 he published the book Ye Berlyn Tapestrie,
a damning satirical indictment of Germany's belligerence styled as a
comic recreation of the Bayeux tapestry of the 11th century.
When the war was over Hassall returned to teaching illustration,
but this time as a correspondence course. In 1919 he created a series of illustrations
for the book My Rest Cure written by the massively popular music hall star George Robey.
hese comedic line drawings were the perfect visualisation of Robey's anecdotal writing and
captured the situation comedy of his narratives with great visual humour and plausibility.
In 1921 he published 2 more books for children. The story of John Gilpin had
originally been written by William Cowper in 1782, but Hassall's interpretation managed to make it
seem fresh and amusing for contemporary children And the same was true of his visualisation of
Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, which was re-written for children, and published a little
later using the flat graphic style which had forged and sustained his reputation.
As the decade wore on the advent of the cinema and dominance of American silent movies inhibited
the number of theatrical posters he created, even if there was still a reasonable amount of
commercial poster work to be had and some of his best comic work was produced during this decade.
By the 1930s it seems he was beginning to wind down his commercial activity but in In
1932 Hassall published two illustrated editions of comic monologues written by Marriot Edgar.
For these verses he produced a remarkable series of pen and ink illustrations which
had mechanical halftone dot screens added, and the largely misguided of a red overprint added by
the publishers. Their success was such that they were reprinted many times in following decades.
This collection appears to be his last published work and by the time The Second World War began
in 1939 Hassall was experiencing ever worsening health problems. Ultimately they got the better
of him in 1948, and he died at the age of 79. The incredible volume and quality of jovial images
John Hassall produced during his 50 years as a professional illustrator remain for me at least
some of the most engaging and beautifully drawn humorous illustration ever created,
and although he was undoubtedly one of the most British of British illustrators I hope that
viewers from further afield might also be seduced by the simple pleasure of his goodnatured work.