Mabel Lucie Attwell

Mabel Lucy Attwell was born 4 June 1879 at Mile End in London, the ninth of ten children. She changed her middle name to Lucie early in her professional career. She was educated at the Coopers’ Company School then funded her studies at Heatherley’s and St Martin’s School of Art but disliked the formal training and completed neither course. In 1908, she married the illustrator Harold Earnshaw, and had three children. They were named Marjorie and Max who quickly became Peggy and Peter to all, and Brian who died young. Their daughter Peggy later became a talented artist and illustrator in her own right and in later years reluctantly took over much of her mother’s work. For most of her early career, Mabel Lucie Attwell lived between London and Sussex. However, her husband died in 1937 and her two London homes suffered bomb damage in 1940 so that she moved to Wiltshire then Cornwall to live with her son Peter. She died on 5 November 1964 in Cornwell. In 1995, a permanent exhibition devoted to her life and work opened in her home town in Favel.

By the time she was sixteen, Mabel Lucie Attwell had enough drawings to take them to a leading London artists’ agency with instant success. Between 1905 and 1913, she illustrated ten books for W. & R. Chambers and designed postcards and greeting cards for Valentine & Sons of Dundee.  During the First World War, thousands of her colored postcards were sent to cheer up the troops in the trenches. One of her most famous drawings ‘Diddums’ was made into a typically styled boy doll which was to be found in nurseries around the world.

She was influenced by Hilda Cowham, John Hassall and William Heath Robinson and became a household name by the 1920s with her simple images of children, fairies and animals. She worked mostly in watercolor and pen and ink. Her early work was delicate and appealing although she was later criticized for providing stereotyped illustrations with little variety. Her response was that “I see the child in the adult, then I draw the adult as a child.

She produced the first of her hugely successful children’s annuals in 1922 and was elected to the Society of Women Artists in 1925.   Her prolific association with Shelley China commenced in 1926 with tea ware made in bone china and baby plates in earthenware. A figure series was introduced by Shelley in 1936 and a limited amount of tableware was reissued after the Second World War.

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She illustrated two gift books for Hodder & Stoughton. The first was Peeping Pansy in 1918 by Marie, Queen of Roumania who invited her to stay at the Royal Palace in Bucharest. The second book was Peter Pan and Wendy by J. M. Barrie who personally requested her to illustrate this edition. She illustrated more than 1,000 postcards and 50 books with pudgy and appealing toddlers. Her style using images of children with cheeky sayings formed the basis of a huge range of greeting cards, advertising commissions including London Underground poster campaigns, and advertisements for house products. She contributed to several periodicals and annuals. In 1937 and 1938, Princess Margaret commissioned her to do her personal Christmas card.  In 1943, she started a comic strip in the London Opinion called “Wot a Life”. Sets of Mabel Lucie Attwell China were used in the Royal Nursery of Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret, and later Prince Charles.

Reference: The Collectable World of Mabel Lucie Attwell by John Henty, 1999.

Peggy - aged 60 - a portrait

Peter - a sketch by Peggy