BOWN, Jane.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

The Gentle Eye. First edition, inscribed by the author on the half-title to Raymond Briggs, "For Raymond Briggs from Jane Bown. A good moment... 7th September 1984". Bown photographed Briggs in 1984 and again in 1989.Accompanying the book is a loosely inserted letter from the Romania Education Vision Action charity thanking Briggs for a donation. On the back of the letter is a handwritten list by Briggs referencing portraits in the book; the index has a handful of annotations corresponding to this list.The Gentle Eye was Bown's first published collection of photographs and was accompanied by an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery.The posthumous book label of Briggs (1934-2022), an illustrator, graphic novelist, cartoonist, and author, is on the front pastedown. The winner of numerous awards, including the Kate Greenaway Medal (twice), the Hans Christian Andersen Award, the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, and the Kurt Maschler Award, Briggs noted that "the whole point of illustration is that it is literary. If it is not, it remains a drawing only... Something must be 'going on' in the illustration" (Horne, p. 124). He is chiefly remembered for Father Christmas (1973), Fungus the Bogeyman (1978), When the Wind Blows (1982), and the perennial classic The Snowman (1978).

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