Leonard Rosoman RA
Artist and Illustrator
1 June - 28 July 2017
RA Library Print Room
Tuesday – Friday
10am – 1pm and 2 – 5pm
Complimentary entry with a valid Royal Academy exhibition ticket or £3 General Admission ticket. Friends of the RA and under 16s go free.
Friends of the RA go free
Spanning a period of almost 60 years, this Print Room display brings together paintings, posters, watercolours and books by consummate illustrator Leonard Rosoman RA.
Leonard Rosoman's skill as an illustrator is at the heart of all his work. Delicate drawn lines are overlaid with washes of colour to create his characteristic, almost dreamlike paintings, such as Jumping Figure: Mohave Desert. His poster design for the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition of 1971 demonstrates his effortless ability to combine all the necessary information for the show within a large hat and a bunch of flowers, without taking away from the impact of his bold drawing of a young girl.
This Print Room display includes books illustrated by Rosoman over a period of nearly 60 years. From one of his first commissions in 1937, to illustrate the children's book My Friend Mr Leakey by the scientist J. B. S. Haldane, to his evocative illustrations to Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain published in 2000, Rosoman's work demonstrates his facility to respond to many different kinds of literature. His illustration ranges from lyrical and amusing drawings for a 1960 edition of A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson, to the far more disturbing images for Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, published in 1971.
Visitors are also encouraged to see Rosoman’s mural Upstairs and Downstairs (1986), permanently on view in the RA’s Grand Café. This large and vibrant painting depicts the private view of the Summer Exhibition and the unseen world of the RA Schools.
This exhibition is timed to coincide with the publication of Leonard Rosoman by Tanya Harrod; an extensive biographical study of his life and work.
Tuesday – Friday
10am – 1pm and 2 – 5pm
Complimentary entry with a valid Royal Academy exhibition ticket or £3 General Admission ticket. Friends of the RA and under 16s go free.
Friends of the RA go free
'Leonard Rosoman' by Tanya Harrod
This astonishing hardback biography presents an extensive study of the life and work of Leonard Rosoman OBE RA. A gifted illustrator, exquisite colourist, elegant draughtsman and master of ingenious perspective, Rosoman enjoyed a rich and varied career, producing work of spectacular range throughout.
This volume rightly celebrates this remarkable artist and includes examples from his time as an Official War Artist, designing for the ballet, as a portrait painter and his large-scale murals.