Feature: William Heath Robinson
Published: 9 June, 2011
THERE is no blue plaque on the wall of No 25 Southwood Avenue, Highgate, where he spent the last nine years of his life and where he died, in 1944. And there’s no plaque either at the nearby house in Hornsey Rise, where he was born in 1872. But then, William Heath Robinson is part of our vernacular, an artist whose crazy comic contraptions have become their own lasting legacy and part of the language, even in America.
When it comes to dishing out plaques, they did in fact put one up in Harrow – at 6 Moss Lane, Pinner – where Heath Robinson, known as the King of Gadgets, lived for just five years during the First World War.
What is surprising is that he never intended to become known for his delightfully eccentric machines – machines that truly didn’t work but showed how man’s imagination can cope with all new technologies. Though he did once confess: “I really have a secret satisfaction in being considered rather mad.”
Heath Robinson came from a family of mature artists, went to Islington Art School for three years and then on to the Royal Academy, his ambition to become a landscape painter. But he soon realised there was little money to be had from such painting so he turned his considerable artistic skills to book illustration instead.
There are many classics collectors still hunt for, including versions of Don Quixote, Rabelais, The Arabian Nights, Pilgrim’s Progress and, in particular, his own fairy tale book, The Adventures of Uncle Lubin, which was an enormous success in 1902 and made him financially secure.
Even so, his first fun drawings weren’t a hit. It was only when he started drawing for the tabloids of the day during the First World War that he hit the mark of popular acclaim.
“The contraptions are just one way of illustrating the absurd lengths to which they would go to achieve the most trivial of ends,” writes Geoffrey Beare in the catalogue Chris Beetles has produced for the current show.
“He set out to deflate the pompous or the pretentious by exaggerating their folly to the point of absurdity.”