Search For Treasures

Saturday, July 3, 2010

Leslie Illingworth (1902 - 1979)



This time, I'm covering a cartoonist that has been said to have been superior to David Low! (oh the blasphemy!!) His name was Leslie Illingworth.

According to his biography, he was born in South Wales on September 2, 1902. Although he worked for many magazines and newspapers in his early years, his main employers were The Daily Mail and the illustrious English humor magazine Punch. In 1945, he became the main political cartoonist for the famous magazine. He left The Daily Mail in 1969. After that, he was mostly retired until he suffered a fatal stroke on December 20, 1979.









Although he is not as famous as David Low, he was just as loathed by the Third Reich. It has been shown that Adolf Hitler himself collected Illingworth's cartoons in his bunker and scribbled insults all over them. That would make any political cartoonist proud.

5 comments:

Kirk Nachman said...

Dig that rendering of Adolf and Uncle Joe as cats oggling the Balkan fish bowl!

Bismark is quoted as saying the Balkans were "...not worth the bones of a single Pomerainian grenadier." Historically, a place of military quagmire.

Oscar Grillo said...

No. He wasn't as good as David Low but he was damn good anyway. Did you see his originals at the "Rude Britannia" in the Tate Gallery? Gorgeous!

Eric Noble said...

"Did you see his originals at the "Rude Britannia" in the Tate Gallery? Gorgeous!"

No I didn't. I would love to though. BTW, thank you for honoring my blog with your presence.

Oscar Grillo said...

For a moment I thought you were in Britain.

Eric Noble said...

Nope. I just have an invested interest in British art and culture.