- Article |
- Discussion |
- Edit |
- History
The artist who put the tiger in your tank
When you work as an artist, it is hard to know whether your work is likely to sink without trace or survive you into posterity. Hatton-based painter and illustrator John Berry talks to Lynne Brighouse about how some of his commercial work has became iconic in the world of advertising and educational books.
Around that time John was living in London and working as a freelance commercial artist, with links to a city advertising agency called Astral Arts.
“I returned to their offices one Thursday afternoon and they asked me to do a rush job for an agency in America who worked for the petrol giant Esso,” he explained. “The company wanted to use the image of a tiger, which had been linked with Esso’s product before the war. After playing around with a few sketches, they gave me the weekend to translate some of the drawings into paintings.
“I recall that they particularly liked one of the drawings which depicted a tiger jumping towards the filler cap of a car.”
The image prompted an off-the-cuff remark.
“Put a tiger in your tank,” John quipped to one of the agency’s representatives and, in that moment, one of most enduring advertising campaigns of the last century was born.
“For around 10 years my original drawings were used with the slogan,” said John. “I had created a series of pictures of tigers in various poses and I would see them appearing everywhere, including on the 30ft high billboards which screened some of the old bomb sites.”
Unfortunately for John who had little idea that his work would prove so popular, he had removed his name from all the paintings on the request of the advertising agency for a one-off fee of £25.
“I never saw the original paintings again, despite the fact that a law passed in 1973 gave artists the right to reclaim any pieces of commercial work as their own.
Although John could only take pride in his work for Esso from a distance, another project which he became involved in during the 1950 and 60s was also destined to reach iconic proportions and, this time, credit for his artwork was not about to slip through his fingers.
The Ladybird book empire had been in existence since 1915 but, in the 1950s, the company started to branch into the educational market.
It was an astute decision and demand for the books expanded rapidly leading to a corresponding need for extra artists to illustrate the popular series.
The company’s art director, Douglas Keene, commissioned John to produce artwork for four new series – People at Work, Learning to Ride, Hannibal Hamster and The Utilities series.
“It was a mammoth task,” explained John. “I had to produce 480 water colour paintings for the People at Work series alone.”
The stylised pictures, which accompanied these series, are etched into the memory of every 1950s and 1960s schoolchild and, as John has discovered, the originals have now become extremely collectible.
“In later life people often become very nostalgic for items associated with their childhood and many of the Ladybird books and prints from that era are now highly sought after,” he explained.
On this occasion, fortunately for John, he retained possession of his original signed paintings, many of which are now on display at the Driffold Gallery in Sutton Coalfield, and have found a keen market.
John’s artistic talents emerged at a very young age. Originally from London, he was given a place at the Hammersmith School of Art aged just 14 and, four years later, was offered a scholarship to the Royal Academy School of Art but, sadly, was unable to get funding.
After enlisting in the RAF in 1940, his creative skills were soon recognised too and he was whisked away from his duties as a radar operator and invited to become a war artist, under the command of the Prime Minister’s son, Randolph Churchill.
As a result, three or four of John’s war paintings can still be viewed, hanging in the British Imperial War Museum.
However, after a lifetime of painting, 88-year-old John is still very far from hanging up his brushes.
Although he no longer gets involved with commercially-based artwork, he has concentrated his talents on figurative art, and has found himself commissioned to produce a range of portraits from a visit by Princess Diana to a series of paintings of native American Indians.
He still loves painting and it seems likely that his talents will leave their mark for several years to come, especially as his artistic skills have passed on through the next two generations, with his daughter and grandson both displaying a creative bent.
Pages linking here
FEEDBACK
Did you enjoy this article? If so, why not comment on it? Perhaps you disagree with something in it, or you know something the writer doesn't and can add some extra facts. You may want to ask a question about this article. Making a contribution is easy - either click 'edit' to insert more information or 'discussion' and then 'add comment.' This is your site. Please feel free to use it to the full and share your memories, thoughts and knowledge about Derbyshire with others.
If there is no 'edit' link showing it means the article has either previously been published in the Derby Evening Telegraph, or it has been protected by the site administrator and cannot be edited.'
|
Other tags that are relevant to The artist who put the tiger in your tank Help us to improve You&Yesterday by adding more tags to this article. Simply edit this page, find this area and add the words in a list separated by commas next to the *. To find out more about tagging please click here. |
County: Derbyshire
Return to You_and_Yesterday
Share this page: del.icio.us 
| digg 
| Fark 
| Furl 
| BlogMarks 