#robert lawson

Robert Lawson (1892-1956), Illustration for Munro Lief's children's book Ferdinand (1936).

Robert Lawson (1892-1956), Illustration for Munro Lief's children's book Ferdinand (1936).

Robert Lawson (1892-1956), Illustration for Munro Lief's children's book Ferdinand (1936).

Folk singer Burl Ives narrates this adaptation of Robert Lawson's 1944 Newberry Medal winning children's book, which tells how a group of small animals view the world of man. The story follows a group of animals living on an abandoned estate in the Connecticut countryside. The animals learn that a new family is moving into the house and they wonder what will happen when humans take over Rabbit Hill. The characters in the story are real animals, filmed just a few inches above the ground, at Rabbit Hill, formerly the home of author Lawson, and the Stamford (Connecticut.) Nature Center.

Full of playful touches, like the sly correspondence between the decorative patches on the matadors’ costumes and the markings on the equally cocksure young bulls, the illustrations benefited from the etcher’s discipline of the burin and the drypoint needle; they have the balance and certainty of a Dürer engraving. Lawson makes masterful use of the white of the page to give his compositions breadth and light, and he employs startling points of view. One drawing is a close-up of the bee perched on a head of clover, warily eyeing the bull’s descending frame; another, after the fateful sting, shows only Ferdinand’s flying hooves as he high-tails it out of there.

Illustration for The Story of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf, 1936

1938