1 Nov 2018 - 18 Nov 2018
Special Mini Exhibition in Honour of WWI Centenary
A selection of WWI illustrations by Heath Robinson along with war-time correspondence will be shown as a small additional exhibition in the Activity Studio.
11am-4pm Thu-Sun & Bank Holiday Mondays except Christmas, Boxing Day, and New Year’s Day
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24 Nov 2018 - 24 Feb 2019
Heath Robinson’s Home Life
The following clip shows an interview with Geoffrey Beare on Uxbridge FM (the interview starts approximately 5 minutes 25 seconds in): From about 1930 onwards Heath Robinson’s humour was centred on domestic life. In 1934 his house “The Gadgets” was constructed at the Ideal Home Exhibition, and in 1936 How to Live in a Flat, the…
2 Mar 2019 - 19 May 2019
The Beardsley Generation
What inspired The Beardsley Generation? The exhibition will explore the impact that new photographic means of reproduction (process engraving) at the end of the 19th Century had on illustration. Older artists who had relied on the craft wood-engraver to work up their sketches for publication were swept aside and a new generation of artists, well...
25 May 2019 - 1 Sep 2019
Tim Lewis: Post Nature
One of the most popular exhibits in ‘A Curious Turn’, our recent automata show, was ‘Mule Make Mule’ by Tim Lewis. This new exhibition will feature a number of Tim’s larger automata and kinetic sculptures selected by the artist and displayed in settings designed by him. Lewis’s sculptures include a variety of machines that react…
7 Sep 2019 - 24 Nov 2019
Heath Robinson Watercolours
See Heath Robinson’s unpublished watercolours, many never exhibited before. Heath Robinson trained as an artist at the Royal Academy Schools and always saw himself as an artist. He earned his living as an illustrator and cartoonist, but he would spend much of the limited spare time he had either drawing or painting in watercolours. He…
30 Nov 2019 - 23 Feb 2020
Fairies in Illustration
See Heath Robinson’s most popular work along with that of other artists, all themed on fairies and elves. The most popular work in the Museum’s collection is a painting called ‘The Fairy’s Birthday’ and the finest examples of Heath Robinson’s illustrative work are the drawings that he made in 1914 to illustrate ‘A Midsummer Night’s...
1 Mar 2020 - 28 Mar 2021
Charles Keeping: Londoner & Illustrator
Charles Keeping, one of the most influential of modern British book illustrators, died in 1988. Our exhibition celebrates his life and work. Keeping was a Londoner through and through, and his childhood in Lambeth provided him with an endlessly rich stock of images to draw on throughout his working life. But his vision was universal,…
22 May 2021 - 29 Aug 2021
John Hassall: Illustrator and Poster Artist
During the early twentieth century, John Hassall was one of Britain’s best-known and most high-profile artists. Working across a variety of disciplines, he was a prolific book illustrator, a humorous artist for postcards and magazines, an art school founder and teacher, a painter in oils, consummate clubman, and a designer of toys, figurines, pottery and...
4 Sep 2021 – 9 Jan 2022
Korky Paul’s Magic of Illustration (with a Flying Visit from Winnie and Wilbur)
Korky Paul has enjoyed outstanding international success as an award-winning illustrator of children’s books, producing many instantly recognisable and popular characters, such as Winnie the Witch, The Fish Who Could Wish, Professor Puffendorf and Sir Scallywag. The Winnie and Wilbur series of picture books written by Valerie Thomas and the fiction or chapter books written...
15 Jan 2022 – 15 May 2022
Heath Robinson’s Children’s Stories
The exhibition will show artwork from the children’s stories that Heath Robinson both wrote and illustrated. See the first signs of his inventive talents and meet a cast of strange and mysterious characters. In 1902 Heath Robinson was commissioned by Grant Richards to write and illustrate a new children’s book and he took the episodic...
21 May 2022 - 4 Sep 2022
The Humour of William Heath Robinson
The 31st May 2022 will be the 150th anniversary of the birth of William Heath Robinson. He was trained as an artist at the Royal Academy Schools, and as past exhibitions at the Museum have shown, he was a great illustrator and a highly accomplished painter in watercolours, but it is as a humorous artist…
10 Sep 2022 - 11 Dec 2022
Scene Through Wood
‘Scene through Wood’ offers a visual feast of the finest wood engravings of the past 100 years, and celebrates the extraordinary artists, past and present, who made them. Curated by engraver and artist Anne Desmet RA RE, this exhibition from the University of Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum — home to one of the most extensive collections...
29 Dec 2022 - 19 Mar 2023
Heath Robinson’s Shakespeare Illustrations
Throughout his career Shakespeare’s plays, and especially the songs within them, provided a source of inspiration for some of Heath Robinson’s most popular and successful illustrations.
