George Worsley Adamson
 
1913–2005

Welcome to the official site for George Adamson the artist. No, this is not about the conservationist who lived in Kenya, but as you can see, this Adamson loves lions too. Nor is it about Adamson, that hapless cartoon character of the 1920s, brainchild of the Swedish artist Oscar Jacobsson, but as you can see, this Adamson is also full of humour.

Adamson was born in the Bronx, New York in 1913, the son of a master car builder for the Interboro-Rapid Transit Co. (IRT), Manhattan. He received his art training at the Mining and Technical College, Wigan, England and afterwards specialized in aquatint, etching and drypoint at Liverpool College of Art. From 1940 to 1946 he served in the RAF—for some time as an official war artist—and later lectured in engraving and illustration at Exeter College of Art, before working for the design group Byrne & Woudhuysen in London and then setting himself up as a full-time illustrator and cartoonist. A retired member of the Chartered Society of Designers, and life member of the Cartoonists’ Association of Great Britain, he illustrated well over 80 books including several by Ted Hughes. He succeeded William Heath Robinson as illustrator of the Professor Branestawm books. He also worked extensively for Punch (his first cartoon in this magazine was published in September 1939), Private Eye  and the Nursing Times, besides providing drawings for Cricket  and British Airports World as well as many cartoons for the ‘Peterborough’ column of the Daily Telegraph.

Some of his pictures are in the permanent collections of the British Museum, the Victoria & Albert Museum, the New York Public Library, the Royal Albert Museum, Exeter, the Imperial War Museum, the Ulster Museum, the RAF Museum at Hendon and the archival collection of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers on long-term loan to the Ashmolean, Oxford. His work has been widely exhibited at home and abroad, including at the Royal Academy and the National Portrait Gallery, and among his own books for children are A Finding Alphabet and Widdecombe Fair. In 1981, he was awarded the Punch book illustration prize in conjunction with the Folio Society and won the commission to illustrate the Folio Society’s P. G. Wodehouse Short Stories. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers in 1987. He died peacefully on March 5th, 2005.

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