Charles Keeping

Charles William James Keeping (22 September 1924 – 16 May 1988) was an English illustrator, children's book author and lithographer. He made the illustrations for Rosemary Sutcliff's historical novels for children, and he created more than twenty picture books. He also illustrated the complete works of Charles Dickens for the Folio Society.

Keeping won two Kate Greenaway Medals from the Library Association for the best children's book illustration of the year, for his own story Charley, Charlotte and the Golden Canary (1967) and for a new edition (1981) of Alfred Noyes's poem "The Highwayman". leaving at the minimum age of 14, after which two of his aunts paid for him to take a correspondence course in art. He took a job with the book printing company William Clowes & Sons, and after the outbreak of the Second World War joined Durrants, an engineering company producing munitions. He also spent some time working as a gasman. He also worked as a life model, and on one such occasion in 1949 his demonstration of the functions of the muscles of the back attracted the eye of Renate Meyer, a fellow student who had left Germany with her family in 1933. They married in 1952

Career

Early work Keeping went freelance after graduation, and spent four years drawing a comic strip for the Daily Herald, but did not enjoy the editorial restrictions he had to work under. He also drew cartoons for the Jewish Chronicle, the Middle Eastern Review, and, later, Punch, and his first book commission was a series of cartoon illustrations for a humorous health-promotion book called Why Die of Heart Disease? in 1953. including Henry Treece. This began a professional relationship with Oxford University Press, for whom he illustrated more books than for any other publisher. In 1966 he created his first full-colour picture books, Black Dolly and Sean and the Carthorse, both about mistreated working horses. He followed these with Charley, Charlotte and the Golden Canary, a modern fairy tale about two children who grow up in the same street, are separated when one family moves to a new tower block, and are reunited thanks to a pet canary, which depicts the gradual disappearance of the London of Keeping's childhood, a theme he would persistently revisit. The full-colour illustrations are messy and spontaneous, using intense colour, sponge texturing and wax resist, and won Keeping his first Greenaway Medal. His widow, Renate, ran the Keeping Gallery, displaying his and her own work for many years. She died in 2014.