Postcard Mania

Attwell, Mabel Lucie

Written by admin on 22 January, 2009 – 9:51 pm -

Mabel Lucie Attwell (4 June 1879 - 5 November 1964) was a British children's illustrator, best known for her cute, nostalgic drawings of children. She based these drawings on her daughter, Peggy. In addition to postcards, Attwell's work featured on advertisements, posters, books and figurines. She was extremely well thought of by her peers, and J.M. Barrie made a personal request for her to illustrate a gift copy of Peter Pan in 1921.

Attwell was the sixth child of butcher, Augustus Attwell, and his wife, Emily-Ann. Although she attended art classes at Regent Street and Heatherley's Art Schools, Attwell demonstrated a non-conformist attitude through her dislike of still-life drawing and classical subjects. She therefore left to develop her own interest in imaginary subjects. Her career began in ernest when after selling work to Tatler Magazine she was taken on by the agents Francis and Mills.

In this vein, her initial career was founded on magazine illustration, which she continued throughout her life, but around 1900 she began receiving commissions for book illustration, notably for the Raphael House Library of Gift Books. Although her early works were somewhat derivative of the style of various artists of the day, such as her friend Hilda Cowham, and the Heath Robinson brothers, Attwell did develop a style of her own. From the beginning of WWI her trademark style of sentimentalized rotund cuddly infants, started its journey to ubiquity.

She married the painter and illustrator Harold Cecil Earnshaw in 1908, with whom she had a daughter and two sons. Lucie Attwell died at her home in Fowey, Cornwall, in 1964, after which her business was carried on by her daughter, Marjorie (known as Peggy). Her Annual which had been published since 1922, was continued until 1974 by extensive re-use of images, a practice established in the 1920s.

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