Her style may have changed over six decades, but her ability to capture those joyful moments of childhood – without sentimentality – mark out her work.
Visitors to Burgh House next month will have a chance to see for themselves at the exhibition Helen Oxenbury: Illustrating the Land of Childhood.
For decades Oxenbury has lived near Hampstead Heath, raising three children with the late author and illustrator John Burningham while winning awards for her work.
“It’s interesting to see the development of my style, I hardly dare tell you how long, but it’s 60 years since the first baby board books,” says the 86-year-old.
Like Bear Hunt, it is published by Walker Books, who in her words “marry up an illustrator with a writer”.
She added: “You never actually meet until publication day for a bit of a celebration.”
Rosen was famously surprised by Oxenbury’s take on his adaptation of an American folk song that he performed in schools.
“Evidently Michael had been absolutely amazed when he saw my illustrations and couldn’t understand what I had done to the story, but I thought it was pretty obvious,” she says. “It just wasn’t what he was expecting.
“Most authors realise that and have to trust you will do a good job.”
The exhibition includes a rejected draft for Bear Hunt showing a procession of characters led by a military man in a pith helmet.
There’s also an early pastel sketch of the family in the final book going into the cave – which drew on her Suffolk childhood, her own children and pet.
“I have a huge pile of trying out illustrations before I get one that is suitable.”
“Fewer words”, she says, give an illustrator more freedom.
“Like Bear Hunt, nothing is described, you don’t know what on earth it is or who is involved and you can do all those wonderful landscapes.”
She says the new book is “like a poem, based on a catchphrase which children like to repeat,” and “much more abstract than Bear Hunt“.
“It’s a bit off the wall, but rather wonderful.”
Looking back, Oxenbury said she “didn’t get on with school at all,” and took solace in weekly art classes.
She said: “They were pretty hopeless but I wasn’t good at anything else. They did back me to do a foundation course for two years which was absolutely brilliant.”
She went on to Central School of Art in London to study theatre design. When she met Burningham in 1964 he was already a successful children’s author.
But it was Meg and Mog creator Jan Pienkowski who encouraged her to illustrate.
“I used to do cards for his Gallery 5 and he said ‘try a children’s book’.” Having watched John, and seen the process, I thought I would have a go at it.”
They both became stars of children’s books, Burninham with the likes of Mr Gumpy’s Outing, Borka, and illustrations for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang – yet they rarely consulted over work.
She said: “I had little studio in Primrose Hill because if you are at home you always see something that needs doing, then realise ‘oh my God that’s the morning gone I still haven’t done any work!'”
She adds: “It didn’t happen often but I would have trouble with vehicles and John was wonderful at that, but he had terrible trouble with anything to do with prettiness.
“Once I heard him shouting downstairs about ‘bloody fairies,’ I looked and you had never seen anything so awful in all your life, so I helped him a bit on his fairies and he helped with my cars.”
Looking through her archive has been a trip down memory lane.
“You don’t really know what’s going to happen once it goes on the bookshelves,” she says. “With Bear Hunt I certainly didn’t, it was ‘that’s done, it’s off into the mists of time’.
“I find it odd that the things I like are never the ones anyone else chooses – there’s a child on a swing in Ten Little Fingers Ten Little Toes. I would really love to do it again because I don’t like it as it is, but people choose it all the time.”
But the exhibition does include illustrations from So Much: “It was the one I had most fun with – about a family planning a birthday party – with great characters and wonderful text.”
The exhibition also takes in her 1967 counting book Numbers of Things, 1974 nursery rhymes, Cakes and Custard, and illustrations for Alice Through The Looking Glass.
Oxenbury’s previous illustrations for Alice in Wonderland started as animated films for TV. But when the project stalled it left her with all the material.
She said: “It was daunting because it’s been done so often and so beautifully but I so loved the books as a child and in the end I thought ‘I will just do it my way and if it doesn’t work I don’t care’.”
Her own children and indeed family dogs have inevitably influenced her work.
“It can’t be avoided. When they are little, you examine them and look at them, it’s in your head and that’s what you draw.”
She adds: “It’s jolly hard work to have a career and kids, you have to really want to do it. I used to work when they were in bed, sometimes up until midnight and I just devoted the rest of the time to the children.
“But if you love it, you don’t mind, and I love doing what I do. I am very lucky.”
Archivists are currently in the house sorting through her work: “You should see the work that 60 years produces!” she says.
But as her latest goes off to the printers, she adds: “I can’t have a break for too long or I get very ratty, I need to work.”
Amy Miller, the curator of the Burgh House exhibition says Oxenbury’s pastels, gouache, drawings and clay figures “capture the limitlessness of imagination”.
“I wanted to show was Helen’s evolution as an artist, her early work from the late 1960s looked very different to her later work,” she says.
“There is a lovely quality to it that’s impossible to quantify. It’s so beautiful and whenever you go back to it, it feels fresh.
“She captures the experience of childhood as children would see it, in such a way that brings you closer as a parent when you are reading to them.
“For Alice she took inspiration from a girl attending a family wedding. She’s a recognisable Alice, wearing Converse, I would recognise her as any of my daughter’s friends.”
Helen Oxenbury: Illustrating The Land of Childhood runs at Burgh House Hampstead from March 6 until December 14.
