Harry Wingfield
Encyclopedia
Illustrator
An Illustrator is a narrative artist who specializes in enhancing writing by providing a visual representation that corresponds to the content of the associated text...
, best known for his drawings that illustrated the Ladybird Books
Ladybird Books
Ladybird Books is a London-based publishing company, trading as a stand-alone imprint within the Penguin Group of companies. The Ladybird imprint publishes mass-market children's books.-History:...
Key Words Reading Scheme (also known as Peter and Jane
Peter and Jane
The Key Words Reading Scheme is a series of 36 English language early readers children's books, published by the British publishing company, Ladybird Books...
) in the 1960s through to the 1980s,
which sold over 80 million copies worldwide.
Wingfield was born in Denby
Denby
Denby is a village in the English county of Derbyshire that is notable as the birthplace of John Flamsteed, England's first Royal Astronomer, and the location of the Denby Pottery Company....
, near Derby
Derby
Derby , is a city and unitary authority in the East Midlands region of England. It lies upon the banks of the River Derwent and is located in the south of the ceremonial county of Derbyshire. In the 2001 census, the population of the city was 233,700, whilst that of the Derby Urban Area was 229,407...
, the son of a blastfurnace man. He grew up in Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
and Derbyshire
Derbyshire
Derbyshire is a county in the East Midlands of England. A substantial portion of the Peak District National Park lies within Derbyshire. The northern part of Derbyshire overlaps with the Pennines, a famous chain of hills and mountains. The county contains within its boundary of approx...
. Hoping to become an engineer, he failed to obtain an apprenticeship to Rolls Royce
Rolls-Royce Limited
Rolls-Royce Limited was a renowned British car and, from 1914 on, aero-engine manufacturing company founded by Charles Stewart Rolls and Henry Royce on 15 March 1906 as the result of a partnership formed in 1904....
because of his stammer
Stuttering
Stuttering , also known as stammering , is a speech disorder in which the flow of speech is disrupted by involuntary repetitions and prolongations of sounds, syllables, words or phrases, and involuntary silent pauses or blocks in which the stutterer is unable to produce sounds...
, he started his first job, in an advertising agency
Advertising agency
An advertising agency or ad agency is a service business dedicated to creating, planning and handling advertising for its clients. An ad agency is independent from the client and provides an outside point of view to the effort of selling the client's products or services...
in Derby, aged 16, and then worked in Walsall
Walsall
Walsall is a large industrial town in the West Midlands of England. It is located northwest of Birmingham and east of Wolverhampton. Historically a part of Staffordshire, Walsall is a component area of the West Midlands conurbation and part of the Black Country.Walsall is the administrative...
and Birmingham
Birmingham
Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...
. He took evening classes in drawing, where he met his wife, Ethel and he served in the RAF in the Second World War as a driver in the RAF regiment. Based in the Azores he painted camouflage but also gained a reputation for painting portraits of colleagues and family members. He worked as a graphic designer when he returned to England before working as a freelance illustrator for Ladybird in the 1950s.
His watercolours, along with those of Martin Aitchison
Martin Aitchison
Martin Aitchison was an illustrator for the Eagle comic from 1952 to 1963, and then one of the main illustrators for Ladybird Books from 1963 to 1990....
, provided strong images to accompany the simple text devised by William Murray
William Murray
-Nobility:*William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield , British jurist*William Murray, 4th Earl of Mansfield and Mansfield , British nobleman*William Murray, 8th Earl of Mansfield and Mansfield -Nobility:*William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield (1705–1793), British jurist*William Murray, 4th Earl of...
. Wingfield's wife Ethel, as an expert in early learning, was a significant collaborator. His best-known work accompanied books in the Key Words Reading Scheme brought out by Ladybird as competition to the American Janet and John
Janet and John
Janet and John are the main characters in a series of reading books for children aged 4–7 years.-Origin:Originally, these stories were published by Row Peterson and Company as the Alice and Jerry books in the USA....
books. They conformed to stereotype
Stereotype
A stereotype is a popular belief about specific social groups or types of individuals. The concepts of "stereotype" and "prejudice" are often confused with many other different meanings...
s, with neat, obedient children; Peter helping Daddy with the car or in the garden, and Jane helping Mummy in the kitchen. They featured images initially based on photography of families on new council estates of the period, a market they targeted with phenomenal success.
Within a few years, new lifestyles meant that Wingfield's images were looking out of date, so he modernised the illustrations in the 1970s. The children became scruffier, and the domestic settings changed, though the books never truly reflected the social changes of the period.
Wingfield remained a freelance for most of his life and in 1989, Ladybird returned a catalogue of around 600 original pictures to him, some of which were sold at exhibition, but many of which he retained. He lived modestly, and after retirement continued to live in the house in Little Aston, near Walsall, where he had spent his working life as an artist.
Exhibitions of Wingfield's pictures were held in Walsall in 2002 and 2003 and across the UK, organised by Ladybird enthusiasts including the writer Cressida Connolly. His works, along with the books, have increased in value in recent years as Ladybird books and their accompanying illustrations have become more fashionable and therefore more collectable.