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Osbert Lancaster

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Name
  
Osbert Lancaster

Role
  
Cartoonist

Children
  
William Lancaster



Died
  
July 27, 1986, Chelsea, London, United Kingdom

Books
  
Drayneflete Revealed, A cartoon history of architecture

Spouse
  
Anne Scott-James (m. 1967–1986), Karen Elizabeth Harris (m. 1933–1964)

Similar People
  
Anne Scott‑James, James Maude Richards, Max Hastings, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Ken Annakin

Osbert lancaster exhibition animation


Sir Osbert Lancaster, CBE (4 August 1908 – 27 July 1986) was an English cartoonist, author, art critic and stage designer, best known to the public at large for his cartoons published in the Daily Express. Interested in art and architectural history and an activist for conservation, much of his work parodied British history and trends in the arts.

Contents

Osbert Lancaster Osbert Lancaster Wikipedia the free encyclopedia

Osbert Lancaster


Biography

Osbert Lancaster Jonathan Glancey on the genius of cartoonist Osbert

Lancaster was born in London, and educated at St Ronan's School, and then at Charterhouse and Lincoln College, Oxford. At Oxford he became friends with John Betjeman and drew cartoons for the university magazine Cherwell. He graduated with a fourth-class degree in English after an extra year beyond the normal three years of study. Intending a career in law, he failed his bar exams and instead entered the Slade School of Art in London.

Osbert Lancaster Sir Osbert Lancaster Victorianism amp Modernism Mark Hill

Lancaster initially worked alongside Betjeman at the Architectural Review. In 1936 he published Progress at Pelvis Bay, the first of his many books of social and architectural satire. In 1939 he became cartoonist at the Daily Express, where he pioneered the pocket cartoon, a single-panel, single-column topical drawing appearing on the front page, since imitated in several British newspapers. In these he sympathetically mocked the British upper classes, personified by his characters William (8th Earl of Littlehampton, formerly Viscount Draynflete) and his wife Maudie. During his Express career Lancaster drew some 10,000 cartoons over a period of 40 years.

Osbert Lancaster An original line Osbert Lancaster39s comic art Books

During World War II, Lancaster worked in press censorship, then in Greece as a Foreign Office press attaché. During the war years his cartoons provided comic relief from the privations of rationing and bombing raids.

Osbert Lancaster Sir Osbert Lancaster English cartoonist and author

After the war Lancaster published Classical Landscape with Figures (1947), The Saracen's Head (1948) and Drayneflete Revealed (1949), the last dealing with the Littlehamptons' architectural and artistic inheritances. Along with The Littlehampton Bequest (1973, foreword by Sir Roy Strong), it provided a humorous and satirical but very well-informed, survey of architectural and aesthetic trends in British and European history.

Osbert Lancaster Nigeness Underrated Great Osbert Lancaster

Among the books he illustrated in this period was Say Please (1949) by Virginia Graham, a sardonic etiquette guide. In 1951 Lancaster worked with John Piper on designs for the Festival of Britain. This was followed by stage design work for opera, ballet and theatre including productions at Sadler's Wells and Glyndebourne, among them Frederick Ashton's production of La Fille mal gardée.

Osbert Lancaster Osbert Lancaster Telegraph

Lancaster was firmly embedded in the British upper middle classes, as is made clear by his autobiographies All Done From Memory (1963) and With an Eye to the Future (1967), and in his books illustrated by himself. In his later life it was observed that he affected a caricatured persona similar to those depicted in his drawings. When he was knighted in 1975 he became one of only a small number of cartoonists to have received the honour, John Tenniel and David Low being others.

Lancaster was the illustrator of many books by other writers, including Noblesse Oblige (London, Hamish Hamilton, 1973, edited by Nancy Mitford, and some editions of C. Northcote Parkinson's books, including Parkinson's Law, its sequel The Law and the Profits, In-laws & Outlaws , and Law of Delay.

Lancaster was married twice: first, to Karen Elizabeth Harris, daughter of Sir Austen Harris, with whom he had a son, William and a daughter, Kara; second, after Karen died in 1964, to the journalist Anne Scott-James, whom he married in 1967 and who became his widow.

Apart from his knighthood, Lancaster's honours included a CBE in 1953 and an honorary DLitt from Oxford, as well as honorary degrees from Birmingham (1964), Newcastle upon Tyne (1970), and St Andrews (1974).

Lancaster died of natural causes, aged 77, in Chelsea. The obituary in The Times summed up his career: "The most polite and unsplenetic of cartoonists, he was never a crusader, remaining always a witty, civilized critic with a profound understanding of the vagaries of human nature." He is buried at West Winch, Norfolk.

Exhibitions

Lancaster's drawings and cartoons were the subject of an exhibition marking the centenary of his birth, entitled "Cartoons and Coronets: The Genius of Osbert Lancaster" at The Wallace Collection from October 2008 to January 2009. Curated by James Knox and supported by the John R. Murray Charitable Trust of John Murray, it coincided with the publication of a new biography with the same title as the exhibition.

Selected publications

  • Drayneflete Revealed (1949) – a humorous history of British architecture, tracing the development of the fictional town of Draynflete over the centuries
  • Here, of All Places
  • Façades and Faces (London, John Murray, 1950)
  • Sailing to Byzantium: An Architectural Companion (London, John Murray, 1969)
  • All Done from Memory (1963) and With an Eye to the Future (1973), autobiography.
  • Cartoons and Coronets: The Genius of Osbert Lancaster (London, Frances Lincoln Publishers, 2008)
  • References

    Osbert Lancaster Wikipedia


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