Back where it all began: Brian Wildsmith in Barnsley

Children’s book author and illustrator Brian Wildsmith is being celebrated through two new exhibitions in his home town of Barnsley at The Cooper Gallery and Experience Barnsley Museum.

Displays are awash with the vibrant palette and limitless imagination which were so recognisable in Brian’s beloved books, including his ABC, The Owl and the Woodpecker, Jungle Party, and many more. Brian’s son Simon Wildsmith introduces these celebratory exhibitions.

‘It was the only possible choice,’ is the recurring answer we provide to the many visitors thus far, who have queried our seemingly left-field choice of Barnsley in Yorkshire for our father’s first major UK exhibition. Brian Wildsmith was born in Barnsley in 1930. He went to Barnsley Art School, before getting his scholarship to the Slade in London.

Visitors often know the rest of Brian’s story, in broad brushstrokes, or at least little sparkling lines, having been inspired to return to it, through one childhood memory or another. Perhaps they were transfixed by the striking stare of an owl’s eyes in the 1960s (chosen here for an enormous flag now hanging from the town hall) or excited by psychedelic multi-coloured tree trunks and landscapes in the 70s. Memories are shared at the exhibition, career choices and motivations explained. ‘It was discovering your father’s art that made me want to be an illustrator,’ says one visitor. ‘I have flown over from Stockholm. I design costumes for the Royal Opera House. Your father is a constant source of inspiration, says another.

It was 2018 when Brian’s daughter Clare contacted the now Exhibitions Officer Alison Cooper with an idea. ‘What if we brought Brian’s art back from his home in France to where it all began?’ Several years, Brexit and a pandemic followed. Hundreds of emails and countless video conferences too, not to mention the newly required mountains of export paperwork. And now it has opened, attracting visitors to the newly transformed town centre, doubtless boosting the local economy, impacting wellbeing and, hopefully, encouraging and stimulating the creativity of future artists, illustrators and innovators from across the borough and beyond. Barnsley is fast becoming a cultural hotspot in Yorkshire, offering exciting and innovative experiences for people of all ages.

Our father’s art is displayed across two of Barnsley Museum’s town centre attractions. At The Cooper Gallery is Paws, Claws, Tales & Roars: The art of Brian Wildsmith, where the walls are awash with the vibrant palette and limitless imagination that define Brian’s books, showcasing illustrations from classics such as Birds, The Owl and the Woodpecker, Jungle Party, Hunter and his Dog, Professor Noah’s Spaceship, Exodus, Joseph and many more. A large (2m x 2m) mixed media painting is also on show. One of many he painted in the 1980s during a break from writing and illustrating books, it represents the Mediterranean dreamscape in which he lived.

Across the road, at the Experience Barnsley Museum, housed in the town hall, is Coming Home: The Life of Brian Wildsmith. Here, visitors can learn more about his life, through photographs, anecdotes, memorabilia, and of course, more of his art! Did you know Brian was a great cricket player? A fine pianist? Ambidextrous? That he could draw two identical lions, simultaneously and in mirror fashion? Have you seen the stunning trilogy of posters he painted for his New York publisher, Franklin Watts in the early 1970s? The Snow Queen, Hansel and Gretel and Sleeping Beauty are among his family’s favourite works. They are also the largest ‘illustrations’ he ever painted at close to 1m tall. His earliest works too, are on show. Extraordinarily self-assured, vigorous, pen and ink drawings he created by the hundred as a jobbing illustrator, careering through London, from publisher to publisher on his 1959 Lambretta. His first ever colour work, for the jacket of H. E. Bates’ The Daffodil Sky is here too, a perfect example of three-colour separation that he was commissioned to produce in what sounds an unforgettable meeting with Victor Morrison, the director at Michael Joseph Ltd: ‘As I entered the Art Director’s office,’ recounted Brian, ‘I found a man, his feet up on his desk, wearing neither tie, nor jacket nor shoes. He was dictating something to another man wearing a bowler hat, a rolled umbrella by his side.

“Do you mind if I shave?” he inquired looking at my work, his face covered in soap. “You’re not bad! We want a three-colour separated book jacket. Can you do that?”
“Oh… yes,” I responded.
“And bleeds too?” he added in return.
Bleeds I thought? I’d never heard of bleeds, but I answered favourably and got the job.’

In fact, we go back even further in Brian’s creative journey, following his thirst for success and recognition, to his very first paid job, the one that made him think ‘Gee, I can make money from this!’. This is a series of drawings of men and women in working men’s clubs, annotated with names, professions and hobbies and commissioned by the Barnsley Chronicle when Brian was just 16 years old. We think you will agree, they show a promise that was quite majestically fulfilled. These two exhibitions lay out that promise.

Returning to Barnsley, we truly have come full circle. Along with returning Brian’s art to his town of birth, we have also returned his and our mother Aurélie’s ashes to the place where they first met, Wentworth Woodhouse, where they both now lie forever under a stunning Camelia that shall always for us remain, as it was that day, in full bloom in brightest pink, his favourite colour.

Brian once said ‘I paint what I see with my eyes and feel with my heart.’ From the tiniest of little insects feasting on flowers, to the mightiest of mammals, his art is filled with the joy of all that is best about our world. It’s a world that is rapidly changing but children are fundamentally the same as they ever were. He was preoccupied with universal themes that have been the concern of humanity for centuries. Themes around such things as compassion, kindness, generosity, sharing and the preservation of our planet.

Those preoccupations are here in Barnsley, laid out on thick handmade paper, impeccably framed and lit, for all to enjoy. We are immensely proud of this event and thankful for the enormous team effort that has allowed it to happen. From all the professionals at Barnsley Museums and beyond to Brian’s lifelong publisher, Oxford University Press. Thanks are due to Liberty Fabrics of London, who so love Brian’s art that they too wished to celebrate it by simultaneously releasing a capsule collection of designs, reimagined by the in-house designers and impeccably printed on organic Tana Lawn cotton. This collection is quite rightly named, Brian’s Wonderful World.

It is a great time of celebration for the amazing artist that is Brian Wildsmith.

With thanks to Simon Wildsmith and Clare Wildsmith. Find out more online.

The World of Brian Wildsmith 20 April – 4 Jan 2025

Barnsley Museums pays homage to this extraordinary, Barnsley born illustrator with a two-site exhibition of rarely seen artworks and objects.

Coming Home: The Life of Brian Wildsmith  

Experience Barnsley Museum, Town Hall, Church Street, Barnsley S70 2TA

Tuesday to Friday 10am – 4pm

Saturday 10am – 3.30pm

Paws, Claws, Tales & Roars: The Art of Brian Wildsmith

Cooper Gallery, Church Street, Barnsley S70 2AH

Monday to Saturday 10am – 4pm