Closing this Sunday is 100 years of Norman Thelwell at Mottisfont National Trust property in Romsey, Hampshire. The house is close to where Norman Thelwell lived (and near to where some of his family still live) so it seems an ideal location to display quite a number of items from the Thelwell family archive.
Mottisfont currently has four rooms filled with Norman Thelwell’s art – and during my visit, the rooms were also pretty full of people. This is a popular exhibition and I heard more than one person say “well, I knew about the ponies but I didn’t know about the rest”. So, yes, if you’re into Norman Thelwell’s pony art, then this is definitely an exhibition that you’ll enjoy, there are plenty of ponies here.
However, as you’ll have noticed, the title of the exhibition refers to 100 years of his art so there’s plenty of work both before the ponies and after the ponies, too.
The display on the top floor landing sets the scene effectively, when it says “…Thelwell grew up in a small but spotless terraced house in Birkenhead, Merseyside. He said that his mother “thought that anyone who didn’t move the wardrobes once a week was a bit suspect’. Even as a child he loved to draw; his earliest surviving drawing is a pencil self-portrait done at the age of 10, on which his teacher has written in red ink ‘V. good indeed’”. That drawing is on display on that landing and is indeed very good (for a ten-year-old).
The first room is definitely pre-pony artwork, as it features a selection of art that Thelwell completed whilst still a student, in Liverpool, where he grew up) and then there’s art from his wartime experiences, in Scotland, India and Egypt. It’s fair to say that this artwork will not have been seen before by the vast majority of attendees and, frankly, it’s great to see this side of his artistic development.
As he noted in his autobiography, Wrestling with a Pencil, published in 1986, “… I hated almost everything about the army but I undoubtedly learned more about drawing and painting during my five or six years’ service than at any other time in my life. This may have been due to the fact that I was at the right age for such development; but I’m sure that it was , in part at least, due to the endless boredom, fear and lunacy and the need to concentrate on something one could believe in beyond the present nightmare.”
There are a number of Punch covers on display – he illustrated over 60 covers in total for the magazine. There’s also plenty of his cartoons for the title, too – cartoons that would often form the basis of subsequent collections that appeared annually in the 1960s, 70s and 80s. And, of course, a whole room of pony pictures.
That room also features a number of reproductions of fan letters sent to Thelwell, typically from children, however one of the letters is from a fellow ex-Eagle contributor Geoffrey Bond (most well known for writing the “Luck of the Legion” strip – which ran underneath Leslie Ashwell-Wood’s famous cutaway drawings for many years). In the letter Bond writes, of their shared time on Eagle “…Those early EAGLE days can never return. Life seemed so much more carefree and wholesome then, and I believe we all had the aim of entertaining and guiding the younger generation very much at heart”.
The final room is devoted to his watercolour paintings; some are local scenes of Romsey, while some are further afield and clearly painted whilst on holiday. I particularly enjoyed the wave effect on a picture of fishing boats putting out to see, very evocative.
There’s only this weekend left of this exhibition but, thanks to the generosity of the Thellwell family, it’s definitely worth a visit if you are in the area.
Richard Sheaf
• 100 years of Norman Thelwell
Runs until 7th May 2023 at Mottisfont House near Romsey, Hampshire, SO51 0LP
• Norman Thelwell Saves The Planet runs until Monday 4th September 2023, The Cartoon Museum, 63 Wells St England, W1A 3AE | Web: cartoonmuseum.org
• Read Richard Sheaf’s review of the exhibition at the Cartoon Museum
• Here’s an album of all Richard Sheaf’s photos from the opening night
• Norman Thelwell – Official Site
Thelwell is regarded as the unofficial artist of the British countryside and is possibly the most popular cartoonist in Britain, since the Second World War. He commented on many aspects of human behaviour, but he is perhaps most synonymous with little girls and their little fat ponies. They have helped to ensure his continuing popularity and his immortality.
Richard Sheaf is a longtime contributor to downthetubes and has written for numerous magazines about British comics.
Categories: Art and Illustration, downthetubes News, Events, Exhibitions, Features, Other Worlds, Reviews
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