SIR QUENTIN BLAKE STORY

SIR QUENTIN BLAKE CBE "The king of us all is Quentin Blake for his use of colour and the sheer exuberance of his drawing." Jill Murphy Blake is beyond brilliant. He is anarchic, moral, infinitely subversive, sometimes vicious, socially acute, sparse when he has to be, exuberantly lavish in the details when he feels like it. He can tell wonderful stories without a single word, but his partnership with Roald Dahl was made in heaven. Or somewhere. The diabolic ingenuity of Dahl came into its own only when he wrote for children. In conjunction with Blake, there was a kind of alchemy. I've never met a child who didn't love Quentin Blake. Melanie McDonagh, Daily Telegraph Quentin Blake was born in 1932 and has drawn ever since he can remember. His first drawing was published in Punch when he was just 16. He went to Chislehurst and Sidcup Grammar School before reading English at Downing College, Cambridge. After National Service he did a postgraduate teaching diploma at the University of London, followed by life-classes at Chelsea Art School. He has always made his living as an illustrator, as well as teaching for over twenty years at the Royal College of Art, where he was head of the Illustration department from 1978 to 1986. His first drawings were published in Punch while he was still at school. He continued to draw for Punch, The Spectator and other magazines over many years, while at the same time entering the world of children's books with A Drink of Water by John Yeoman in 1960. He collaborated with Roald Dahl from 1978 until the author’s death in 1990, and subsequently redrawing and producing new illustrations. His books have won numerous prizes and awards, including the Whitbread Award, the Kate Greenaway Medal, the Emil/Kurt Maschler Award and the international Bologna Ragazzi Prize. In 1999 he was appointed the first ever Children's Laureate, a post designed to raise the profile of children's literature. Since the 1990s Quentin Blake has had an additional career as exhibition curator, curating shows in, among other places, the National Gallery, the British Library and the Musée du Petit Palais in Paris. In the last few years he has begun to make larger-scale work for hospitals and healthcare settings in the UK and France where his work can be seen in wards and public spaces. In 1988 he was awarded an OBE for services to children’s literature and in 2005 he was made a CBE. Sir Quentin Blake has collected numerous honorary degrees and doctorates which recognise his outstanding contribution to the worlds of illustration, children’s literature and now also exhibition curating. France paid a special tribute to Quentin by creating him ‘Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres’. He received a knighthood for 'services to illustration' in the 2013 New Year's Honours and became an Honorary Freeman of the City of London in 2015. Quentin’s vision for a Museum of Illustration is currently being turned into a reality. It will be the first official home in the UK dedicated solely to the art of illustration, based in the Kings Cross regeneration area of London. It will be the place to see past and present illustration both British and International. The permanent collection will begin with the complete works of Quentin Blake which consists of the entire collection of finished illustrations to over 250 books as well as freelance commissions over the past 60 years. "His style is so alive that you feel every line is electric" Emma Chichester Clark