To celebrate National Illustration Day, Project Archivist (E.H. Shepard Collections) Hollie Piff explores the creative process behind E.H. Shepard’s illustrations for Everybody’s Pepys, Everybody’s Boswell, and Everybody’s Lamb.
From perfecting the proportions of the human figure to accurately drawing trees and landmarks, observational studies were often the first steps in E.H. Shepard’s artistic process. So, as an artist trained in observation, how did Shepard draw people, places and objects that no longer existed? How did he accurately portray historical subjects and settings?
E.H. Shepard studied art at the Royal Academy Schools from 1897 to 1902 and began his training in the ‘Antique School’, where students made drawings of plaster casts and statues. Eventually, Shepard and his peers progressed to the ‘School of the Living Model,’ where they developed their skills of observation and drawing from life. The observational skills that Shepard developed at the Royal Academy informed everything he did, and the Shepard Trust Collection reflects this. The collection contains hundreds of Shepard’s life drawings and sketches of people, places and objects that inspired illustrations in magazines, books, and advertisements.
The ‘Everybody’ Series
From 1926-1933, Shepard illustrated a series of three historical books: Everybody’s Pepys (1926), Everybody’s Boswell (1930), and Everybody’s Lamb (1933). Spanning almost 200 years of British history, each book required Shepard to “soak [himself] in the period” to ensure that each chair, building, wig and costume was historically accurate (3 May 1931, MS 1640/6083, University of Reading).
Shepard’s sketchbooks from this period are fantastic records of his exhaustive process, with postcards, correspondence, newspaper clippings and copies of photographs complementing pencil sketches and studies.
Shepard didn’t rely purely on secondary sources for his research and, while illustrating Everybody’s Boswell in 1930, he travelled to Scotland to sketch the locations that Samuel Johnson and James Boswell visited on their journey to the Hebrides. The records of Johnson and Boswell’s trip were so detailed, Shepard explained, that he felt “sure some of the places must be known enough to make a real picture imperative” (21 January 1930, MS 1649/6085, University of Reading).
Shepard traced the pair’s route so closely that he “lunched in the room […] where Johnson sat with the Governor” and, at Argyll Castle, spotted “the very staircase on which the giggling maids were at work” when Dr Boswell “ogled them” (EHS/H/21a, University of Surrey). Shepard found many of the sites unaltered and was able to capture landscapes and buildings that served as important settings in his illustrations; as Shepard explained in a letter to Bickers, had he “relied on imagination [he] should have come down badly” (9 May 1930, MS 1649/6085, University of Reading).
Not all of Shepard’s field trips were quite so successful, and a visit to Streatham to study Thrale Hall Hotel while working on Everybody’s Lamb was disappointing. In a frustrated letter to Bickers, Shepard reported that “all traces of the Hall have gone…So that’s that” (14 March 1930, MS 1649/6085, University of Reading). In cases such as this, Shepard used his knowledge of the period to create convincing alternatives or, on more than one occasion, scrapped the drawing entirely.
Despite Shepard’s dogged persistence, in a manuscript essay on book illustration he acknowledged the impossibility of achieving complete historical accuracy, describing “unearth[ing] a fresh batch of prints showing errors in already completed drawings,” as “almost heartbreaking” (EHS/H/21a, p.2, University of Surrey). However, tight publishing deadlines meant Shepard had to accept that not every individual object, costume and landscape could be scrupulously researched. Fortunately, as he later noted, “only one person in every thousand is really in a position to put one right,” so it was unlikely that minor mistakes and inaccuracies would be noticed (EHS/H/21a, p.4, University of Surrey).
To conclude
The Shepard Trust Collection gives us an invaluable insight into Shepard’s work, highlighting his dedication to research and undeniable passion for history. The vast collections of preparatory sketches reveal a hard-working, professional artist who challenged himself to do his best work and remain true to his source material. Shepard’s commitment to accuracy is just as present in his most well-known works, Winnie-the-Pooh and The Wind in the Willows, where considered observational sketches of scenery and landscapes allowed Shepard to build believable worlds where characters such as Piglet and Mr Toad could spring to life.
It seems fitting, on National Illustration Day, to uncover and celebrate the resourcefulness and determination of one the nation’s most-loved illustrators.
References
Shepard, Ernest Howard. Letter to G.H. Bickers. 3 May 1931. George Bell and Sons Archive. MS 1640/6083. University of Reading Special Collections, https://www.reading.ac.uk/adlib/Details/archiveSpecial/110256246
Shepard, Ernest Howard. Letter to G.H. Bickers. 21 January 1930. George Bell and Sons Archive. MS 1640/6085. University of Reading Special Collections, https://www.reading.ac.uk/adlib/Details/archiveSpecial/110256248
Shepard, Ernest Howard. Other Manuscripts: Speeches and Essays: On Book Illustration. c.1937. E. H. Shepard Archive. EHS/H/21a. University of Surrey Archives and Special Collections, http://calmarchivecat.surrey.ac.uk/calmview/Record.aspx?src=CalmView.Catalog&id=EHS%2fH%2f21&pos=1
Shepard, Ernest Howard. Letter to G.H. Bickers. 9 May 1930. George Bell and Sons Archive. MS 1640/6085. University of Reading Special Collections, https://www.reading.ac.uk/adlib/Details/archiveSpecial/110256248
Shepard, Ernest Howard. Letter to G.H. Bickers. 14 March 1930. George Bell and Sons Archive. MS 1640/6085. University of Reading Special Collections, https://www.reading.ac.uk/adlib/Details/archiveSpecial/110256248
Sketchbook 27, Shepard Trust Collection, Acc2025-68.
Sketchbook 38, Shepard Trust Collection, Acc2025-68.
