An Exquisite Line ~

Art director, educator and illustrator Robin Jacques ( March 27, 1920 - March 18, 1995 ) was born in London, England to World War One pilot Robin Jacques and his wife Mary. Orphaned as a child, he taught himself to be an artist and began working in an advertising agency in his teens. Although he had no formal art training, he enjoyed drawing and used anatomy books, objects in the Victoria-Albert Museum, and his surroundings for his instruction.

Jacques ( rhymes with 'cakes' ) served as art editor for Strand magazine and was art director for the Central Office of Information. He began teaching at the Harrow College of Art in 1973 and at the Canterbury Art College and Wimbledon Art College in 1975.

Jacques was a prolific illustrator, and his beautiful line art graced the pages of over one-hundred novels and children's books from the 1940's through the 1980's, most notably the fairy tale compilations of Ruth Manning-Sanders.

"My preference is for children's books of the more imaginative and fanciful kind, since these leave greater scope for illustrative invention, where I feel most at home. Thus, my work with Ruth Manning-Sanders has proved most satisfying, and the twenty-five books we have done together contain much of the work that I feel personally happiest with."

His expressive characters and breath-taking stippling are the pinnacle of illustration. Few artists have been able to equal his grace, restraint and near-perfection of line and detail.

"Illustration is something other than superlative drawing or a display of technical know-how. Unlike painting and sculpture, an illustration has a direct function... Illustration can never be a private exercise in graphic experiment unrelated to a specific purpose. Where it becomes this, it may be in itself enormously interesting but it will, by definition, no longer be illustration."