OBITUARY : Garth Williams

Garth Williams was so masterly an artist that he might have pursued a career in one of many disciplines: architecture, painting, sculpture, even textile design. However, he chose to demonstrate his versatility by illustrating some of the most memorable American children's books of the century; these include the notable first editions of E.B. White's Charlotte's Web (1952) and Marjory Sharp's The Rescuers (1959), and the definitive version of Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie (1953).

Williams was the son of two artists, a father who drew cartoons for Punch and publications in New York, and a mother who painted landscapes. As a probable result of their example, he developed two of his essential talents: to visualise humour through character and conjure up a sense of place.

Certainly, his experience of growing up on a farm in New Jersey "as a typical Huckleberry Finn" affected his approach to illustration and gave an underlying direction to his life. However, when he reached the age of 10, his family moved to England, and he had to acquaint himself with a very different environment.

In 1929, Williams began a thorough and ambitious programme of art education by studying architecture at the Westminster School of Art. Two years later, he transferred to the Royal Academy Schools, where he won a scholarship in oil painting and made a detailed study of mural painting. He retained his contact with Westminster by attending its evening classes in sculpture, first in order to improve his drawing, but soon as an absorbing independent discipline.

On completing a postgraduate year at the Royal Academy (1935), Williams supported himself by directing the Luton School of Art and painting murals for such clients as the Earl of Derby. Yet only a year later, he abandoned this work when he won the Prix de Rome. The traditional year at the British School in Rome and a subsequent study tour of Europe appeared to prepare him at last for a career in sculpture, and back in London he produced a number of portrait busts.

But the outbreak of the Second World War prevented him from pursuing either this course or an appointment as Art Director of a women's magazine. Instead he worked in London as an Ambulance Dispatcher for the British Red Cross until, in 1941, he injured his back in an air raid. This decided his return to the United States.

There his offers to serve in either the American Civil Service or as a camouflage artist were refused, and instead he worked in a war plant making lenses. In 1943, he was forced to rest for the sake of his health and began to seek work as a cartoonist. Though the New Yorker rejected his cartoons as "too wild and too European", they did accept some smaller drawings. These caught the attention of Ursula Nordstrom, children's book editor for Harper & Row so that, when she received the note "try Garth Williams" pinned by E.B. White to his manuscript of Stuart Little, she was very willing to accept the recommendation. Published in 1945, this story of a mouse-like, mouse-sized child proved to be such a success that Williams decided to become a professional illustrator of his own and other writings for children.

In the first decade of his new career, Williams produced some of his finest achievements: illustrations to White's second book for children, Charlotte's Web (1952), and his complete uniform edition of the works of Laura Ingalls Wilder (1953). He worked for 10 years in order to perfect his images for Wilder's "Little House" series, meeting the author, researching details and travelling all over the territory covered in the stories, from Oklahoma to upper New York State. When the edition was published, he explained his thoroughness by stating that "illustrating books is not just making pictures of the houses, the people and the articles mentioned by the author: the artist has to see everything with the same eyes".

That degree of sympathy was equally necessary to visualise the resonant moral fantasy of E.B. White's nursery classic, Charlotte's Web. The story, loved by generations of children, concerns a grey spider, Charlotte, who sets out to prove that she can save the runt-piglet Wilbur from being killed for bacon. Referring to this book, The Oxford Illustrated History of Children's Literature (1995) has suggested that "it is perhaps Williams's ability to instil personality into his characters that is most impressive; no pig could look more complacently smug than Wilbur".

Williams understood his influence as a writer and illustrator on the values of children, and set out to "awaken something of importance . . . humour, responsibility, respect for others, interest in the world at large". However, such an agenda could prove controversial. When he presented a moonlit marriage between a black and a white rabbit (in his own book The Rabbits' Wedding, 1958), he was accused by a White Citizens' Council in Alabama of promoting racial integration. His use of anthropomorphism, which sought to unite man and nature, was certainly neither timid nor hackneyed.

In later life, he returned to the rural life he had relished as a child. Ceasing to illustrate for almost a decade, he moved to Mexico, where he built a farm at Guanajuato. From then until his death he divided his time between the farm and his home at San Antonio, Texas. He also travelled in Europe, yet he did not fully abandon his work as an American illustrator. As late as the 1980s, his work on George Seiden's classic The Cricket in Times Square (1982) and his own The Chicken Book (1983) proved his sustained devotion to imaging the fables of the New World.

David Wootton

Garth Montgomery Williams, artist, writer, children's illustrator: born New York 16 April 1912; married twice (five daughters, one son); died Guanajuato, Mexico 8 May 1996.