Lot 336: HALE, KATHLEEN.

Orlando Reclining Amongst Flowers

Condition Note: 370 by 465mm., oil on canvas, signed "K. Hale", framed

A Slender Reputation pp.205-214, 256-258.

KATHLEEN HALE (1898-2001)

Kathleen Hale read voraciously to her sons Peregrine and Nicholas especially the stories of Beatrix Potter, Edward Ardizzone and Jean de Brunhoff. Tired of repeating the same stories she invented her own. "Because Peregrine and Orlando were so devoted to each other, I chose Orlando as my hero." Orlando, Grace and the kittens formed the united family she had never experienced as a child. It was C.K. Ogden who persuaded her to write down and illustrate her stories. Conceived initially in black-and-white and in a small format, she soon realised she had to work in colour, and it was the large format style of the Babar stories that appealed to her and, she felt, to children. The first tales completed were Orlando's Camping Holiday and Orlando's Trip Abroad, however a literary agent failed to find a publisher. Despondently she turned to a friend, Geoffrey Smith, who was a director of the printing firm Cowells. He suggested she approach Noel Carrington, editor of Country Life. Carrington had just returned from Russia where he had been greatly impressed by their auto-lithographed books for children. He felt this medium would suit Kathleen Hale's stories and style of illustration. Cowells lithographed the first title which was published in 1938, however this technique proved time-consuming and costly. In order for Kathleen Hale to continue with the effect she wanted, she decided to produce all the subsequent lithographic plates, black-and-white and each individual coloured plate, herself. In her autobiography she relates, "I needed 128 plates for each book. One large-format book took four to five months of working seven hours a day, seven days a week."

oil paintings on this large scale of orlando himself are uncommon. Due to the heavy work-load necessitated by the style of her books, Kathleen Hale rarely got the chance to produce large-scale finished paintings relating to the characters in her books. During the late 1950s and 1960s she did produce a series of large oil-paintings, mostly of "fishes and birds in watery landscapes" for the antiquarian booksellers Stevens and Brown in London, all of which sold immediately, including one she described as Grace in the style of Hogarth's 'Shrimp Girl'.