A tiny selection from the compendious output of Edward Bawden – a superbly versatile English illustrator with the lightest of touches. Curiously weightless but never superficial, Bawden’s drawings revealed his delight in the visual world and his immense skill in reducing scenes of great complexity into just a few well chosen lines. A delicate hint of gentle malice and a quality of linear bite were just enough to immunise him from the fatal English affliction of whimsy. For my money he is, by some distance, the greatest of a very talented generation that includes Barnett Freedman, Eric Fraser, Harold Jones, Clifford Webb, Gwen Raverat, Clarke Hutton, Clare Leighton, John Farleigh and John Nash.
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