Raymond Sheppard Illustrator

"Breakfast on the road" from The Caravan Family - Original art

Two auction houses have Raymond Sheppard artwork for sale. I thought I'd quickly add them here for reference and our enjoyment. It also reminded me that I haven't uploaded anything about M. D. Hillyard's "The Caravan Family" series. So look forward to that in the New Year.

These three original artworks have come up before from the same auctioneers - Hannams. Interestingly they have omitted any mention of where they were published - which I let them know last time - and watercolour is now listed as gouache. Raymond Sheppard used both but I would not like to state certainly which medium he used here.

Title: Raymond Sheppard (1913-1958) Gouache on board "Snowy walk"43 x 30 cm.
Auction:  Estimate: £80-£120 [SOLD:  £60]
Seller: Hannam's Auctioneers
Date of auction: 3 to 6 Jan 2022 (Lot 3359)
Size: 43 x 30cm

"Through the big woods" from The Caravan Family - Original art

Title: RAYMOND SHEPPARD (1913-1958) GOUACHE ON BOARD "FOREST HOLIDAY"43 X 30 CM.
Auction:  Estimate: £80-£120 [SOLD:  £240]
Seller: Hannam's Auctioneers
Date of auction: 3 to 6 Jan 2022 (Lot 3361)
Size: 43 x 30cm

"Full Speed Around!" from The Caravan Family - Original art

Title: RAYMOND SHEPPARD (1913-1958) GOUACHE ON BOARD " FAIRGROUND RIDE"43 X 30 CM.
Auction:  Estimate: £80-£120 [SOLD:  £100]
Seller: Hannam's Auctioneers
Date of auction: 3 to 6 Jan 2022 (Lot 3360)
Size: 43 x 30cm

The other auction I mentioned is of amphibians of various sorts from Burston & Hewett - the caroline Gee Collection.

Amphibians

Title: Raymond Sheppard, 2 sheets of pencil sketches, newts and frogs, 24cm x 34cm, Exhibition labels.
Auction:  Estimate: £50-£100 [SOLD £50]
Seller: Burstow & Hewett
Date of auction: 25 Jan 2022 (Lot 124)
Size: 24 x 34cm

The description:

Raymond Sheppard, 2 sheets of pencil sketches, newts and frogs, 24cm x 34cm, Exhibition labels verso, framed (2)
 

Whilst on the subject of auctions, there's a lovely watercolour on eBay that I've been tracking for a while. 

The Mill Pond, Dorchester-on-Thames

The current reduction in price makes this very attractive to me, but I think I have enough artwork already.  It's being sold by Claire 007 Antiques of Harleston, Norfolk. She describes it thus:

DESCRIPTION-
I have up for sale a fabulous water colour by renowned artist Raymond Sheppard. The painting is titled "The Mill Pool" Dorchester-on-Thames.
Painted while he was serving in the RAF in WW2.
The scene is quite off the beaten track near a hamlet called Overy and the mill pool is round the corner from Overy Farmhouse.

It's currently £297.50 "Buy It Now" and was £595.00, as I said, a real bargain in my opinion.

And finally there's another that has remained at the same price (starting bid £985) for quite a while

"Courting leopards

Titled Raymond Sheppard 1913-1958 - “Courting Leopards “Pastel 1950 -21 x 32cm this gorgeous painting is being sold by stuart9044 who is based in Hitchin. 

 

Rolling Year p. 216 "Man doth not live by bread alone"

Rolling Year p. 178 "An Old Water Wheel"

The two pages above appeared in Rolling Year by W. J. Blyton. If you want to know more about the author follow this link to my previous article

Clouds (a)

Clouds (b)

I thought it might be interesting to look at these two pieces of art as I now own the originals. They look, at first appearance, to be a scraper-board technique. Several of Sheppard's early illustrations appear like this. But I wondered if this was true when looking closely at the clouds in the picture of the church. There appears to be little or no scraping in this area.

David Slinn, who regularly writes to me about Sheppard, amongst other things, commented it looks like ink on a china clay surface and then scraped Why? Because the artists back then were brought up on woodblock in books previously therefore they have an inkling of that method of scraping, etching.  I think you’ll find quite a bit of evidence of the use of a scalpel – both on illustration board and (it would seem) actual scraperboard in a few instances – amongst the images included from Round the Year Stories: Summer Book. Your expressed concern “...why are the lines predominantly ‘crude’...”, possibly has as much to do with the method of the book’s production. The culprit being retouching work on the negatives during the plate making process... perhaps absolving Raymond Sheppard from blame. But also bear in mind that black and white work of this type was, generally, considerably less well rewarded than you might think.

SPECIAL BONUS
This is a photo I took - forgive the pen intruding on the image! - of the pencil rough with Sheppard's notes underneath whilst visiting Christine Sheppard. It's interesting to note that "More than half the people go to church", an actual quote from the text, was not used in the finished version.

Pencil rough of page 216

Raymond Sheppard illustrated a little seen strip in Girl comic, a companion for....girls, to the famous Eagle comic begun by Rev Marcus Morris and Frank Hampson, the creator of "Dan Dare".

Heritage Auctions, in the United States, has an original artwork by Sheppard from this strip.

"Black Beauty" by Raymond Sheppard Girl Volume 1:8, 21 Dec 1951

The series ran from the first issue of Girl on 2 November 1951 (Volume 1: 1) until 29 February 1952 (Volume 1: 18). It was published on the centrespread of the comic (down the left hand column) along with John Ryan's "Lettice Leef" among other features. Ryan, of course was the creator of "Captain Pugwash". As can be seen this is episode 8 of the story by Anna Sewell.

This gives me the opportunity to show you all the pictures I have of this series. If anyone wants to share any other parts, I'd be enormously grateful

Part of the original centrespread for Girl Volume 1:1 Girl 23 Nov 1951 Volume 1:4

Original art from an eBay picture of issue 7

Issue 7 artwork

Unknown episode

The auction ends on Sunday 27 August and I'll record here how much it sells for

Black Beauty Girl Volume 1: 8
WHERE?: Heritage Sunday Internet Comics Auction #121735
LOT #: 14103 
SELLER:Heritage
STARTING BID:$
ENDING PRICE:$131.45 (inc. Buyer's Premium) = £101.66
No of bids: 3

Lilliput Oct-Nov 1951 Cover by Donald Brown

I am the very proud owner of some original Raymond Sheppard artwork. Where some people love his animal work, I enjoy his magazine illustrations because they are interesting in the original format. But before I show what I own, I need to tell you my story. Many years ago I visited the British Library in order to list in detail Frank Bellamy's work in Lilliput magazine. I loved the fact while I was doing this I discovered many Sheppard illustrations. You need to know that Lilliput, at this stage, measured just 5.5" x 7.5" (14.5cm x 19.5cm) - allegedly to fit in soldier's pockets. So the bound copies were really hard to peruse quickly, and I was just looking for illustrations. I felt uncomfortable skipping through pages so quickly with more serious scholars beside me! But these bound copies made it hard to even do that! However I found Sheppard had illustrated a story called "The Riddle" by James Houston & Don O'Donnell (pages 64-66 of the above issue for those who need to know) - that's the riddle at the top of this article.


After alighting on three pages with Sheppard artwork (no Bellamy) I was pleased with myself and carried on through not expecting any more. I rushed past a page with a tiny illustration and paused on the next page. I went back and there in minute lettering was that now familiar signature!  The article? "The Last Wolf"

But let's first have a look at "The Riddle" and as a special treat I have scanned the whole Inuit story..

Lilliput Oct-Nov 1951: The Riddle illustrated by Raymond Sheppard Small elven creatures dance while a boy looks on

Lilliput Oct-Nov 1951: The Riddle illustrated by Raymond Sheppard A dog howls as three owls rise into the air

I had real trouble with the above illustration, seeing what I was looking at until I noticed the boy at the right of the picture peering over the rock. And reading the story I immediately 'understood'.

James Archibald Houston, one of the authors, is someone I'd never heard of but thanks to Philsp.com I found his middle name which helped me find information (on Wikipedia) much quicker. he was a "Canadian artist, designer, children's author and film-maker who played an important role in the recognition of Inuit art and introduced printmaking to the Inuit." Read more about this adventurer here. Don O'Donnell appears to have co-written the four stories that appeared in Lilliput between 1951-1952 (saved for another time) and the Library of Congress catalog shows me that a Don O'Connell was the pseudonym for a Windsor Howard O'Donnell but that leads nowhere beyond one published work and may not be the same person.

Now to the that wolf I mentioned. the picture I found was a mere 2 inches square give or take. It was no wonder I missed it it first time. Here's the complete article:

Lilliput Oct-Nov 1951 The last wolf?

This fascinating story of the "Allendale Wolf" is wonderfully told on Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog and we have a contemporary postcard of the dead animal which even warrants a brief Wikipedia article

By Tassell, Carlisle - Postcard published in 1905, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29279554

I prefer Raymond Sheppard's kinder treatment than this horrid postcard and I love the original artwork which I'm very proud to own.

Original art by Raymond Sheppard

The shaped paper over the artwork was there when I bought it