Michael Foreman

Foreman, Michael (1938– ). Born in Pakefield, Suffolk, he graduated from the Royal College of Art, London, and lectured in various art schools and colleges between 1963 and 1972. His work as an illustrator has gained him such major awards as the Maschler (1982), the Kate Greenaway (1983) and the Smarties prize (1993). He has illustrated fairy tales from the European classics—Charles Perrault (1982), the Grimms (1978), and Hans Christian Andersen (1974); folk tales from around the world—Japan, New Zealand, India, Ireland, and Cornwall; and modern fairy tales by Oscar Wilde, Terry Jones, and himself (All the King's Horses, 1976). Foreman's distinctive fairy‐tale illustrations assert their difference from more traditional styles. He works with watercolours and often restricts his palette to blues, browns, or pastels, for example; he makes minimal use of classical perspective, and often layers a scene as a series of planes moving towards a high horizon reminiscent of 19th‐century Japanese woodcuts, while vertical lines are curved or wavy and lean away from the perpendicular; figures placed within the scene are abstracted towards caricature or the grotesque—by elongation of figure, by exaggeration of feature and gesture, or by excesses of beauty or ugliness. The style also enables depiction of delicate, lyrical beauty, however, counterpointing or offsetting ugliness or sentimentality in a story. His illustrations not only emphasize thematic implications but also enter into vigorous dialogue with those implications, accentuating their absurdities and monstrosities and exploring their comic potentialities. The often disconcerting effects of line, layout, and comic grotesquerie effectively discompose the spectator, prompting fresh and interrogative responses to the illustrated stories.

— John Stephens