BOND, Michael; BANBERY, Fred (illus.)

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Original artwork for Paddington at the Seaside: "You Can Have a Seat in the Front Row..." Published in Paddington at the Seaside, in 1978, on pages 30-31. The drawing shows Paddington, with ice cream in paw, in a crowd of spectators watching a Punch and Judy performance on the beach.The text reads, "But when he saw the enormous crowd watching them from the promenade his face lit up. It was the biggest audience he'd had for a long time and he decided to make the most of it by putting another show on then and there. 'You can have a seat in the front row,' he said to Paddington. 'I expect bears go very good boos'".In 1972 Michael Bond began writing a series of Paddington Bear books for younger readers, later known as the "Paddington Picture Books". These were coloured picture books requiring a different visual style from the novels, and the artist Fred Banbery (1919-1999) therefore took over the illustration of Paddington from Peggy Fortnum. Banbery had studied at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, and published a significant quantity of work in periodicals including Atlantic, Colliers, Economist, New Yorker, Sunday Times, Times of India, and Wall Street Journal. Six volumes of the picture books were published by Collins in London, and Random House in New York between 1972 and 1978. They predate the stop motion animated television series.Provenance: The Estate of Fred Banbery; Chris Beetles, "Paddington Bear in St James's", December 2014; Private Collection.

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