Picnic Gallery

Picnic, c1950. Creator: Shirley Markham

Picnic, c1950. Shirley Markham (1931-1999) studied Graphic Design and Illustration at Central School of Art in London from 1950-1952. The writer, artist, poet, and illustrator Mervyn Peake (1911-1968) was one of her tutors, and her style of drawing was also influenced by other British illustrators such as Edward Ardizzone, Quentin Blake and Edward Bawden. Markham spent time in the Dolomite Mountains in Italy, and also visited Rome, sketching classical buildings. After graduating from Central, she worked as a graphic designer, producing book illustrations, cartoons for comics, menus and programmes. She gave up her promising career however when she got married in 1957. Middle-class women at that time were expected to devote their energies to bringing up children and running the home, and despite her obvious talent, she lacked the confidence to return to illustration. Her portfolio remained in the family attic for many years, but now her work is published here for the first time

© Shirley Markham Collection / Heritage-Images

Edward Prince of Wales with Denys Finch-Hatton

Edward Prince of Wales, later King Edward VIII, at tea in the bush camp, his Royal Highness near Kiu while on one of his hunting expeditions in East Africa with Captain Anderson, the elephant-hunter (left), and Captain Finch-Hatton, (also known by her pen name as Isak Dinesen), a Danish noblewoman who wrote about him in her autobiographical book Out of Africa), Captain Finch-Hatton was killed in 1931, when the Gypsy Moth he was flying crashed in Kenya. Date: 1930

© Illustrated London News Ltd/Mary Evans

Two Grey Squirrels, on a little picnic bench eating nuts and Berries, white background T

Two Grey Squirrels, on a little picnic bench eating nuts & Berries, white background

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