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{{Short description|American children's book illustrator (1912–1996)}}
{{Infobox artist
| name = Garth Williams
| birth_date = April 16, 1912
| birth_place = New York City, U.S.
| death_date = May 8, 1996 (aged 84)
| death_place = Marfil near [[Guanajuato]], Mexico
| education = [[Westminster School of Art]], [[Royal College of Art]], [[British School at Rome]]
| notable_works = Illustrations for ''[[Charlotte's Web]]'' and ''[[Stuart Little]]'' by [[E. B. White]]; Illustrations for ''[[The Cricket in Times Square]]'' by [[George Selden (author)|George Selden]]; illustrations for the ''[[Little House on the Prairie|Little House]]'' series by [[Laura Ingalls Wilder]]
| awards = [[British Prix de Rome]]
| style = Line drawing
| known_for = Illustrating children's books
| image = TC-GarthWilliams5.jpg
| caption = An undated photo of Garth Williams.
}}
'''Garth Montgomery Williams''' (April 16, 1912 – May 8, 1996) was an American artist who came to prominence in the American [[Post-war|postwar era]] as an [[illustrator]] of children's books. Many of the books he illustrated have become classics of American [[children's literature]].<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://no.pinterest.com/pin/252060910372714974/|title=Garth Montgomery Williams|last=|first=|date=|website=Pinterest}}</ref>
{{blockquote|text=In ''[[Stuart Little]]'', ''[[Charlotte's Web]]'', and in the [[Little House on the Prairie#Wilder's Little House books|''Little House'' series]] of books of [[Laura Ingalls Wilder]], Williams['s] drawings have become inseparable from how we think of those stories. In that respect ... Williams['s] work belongs in the same class as [[Sir John Tenniel]]'s drawings for ''[[Alice in Wonderland]]'', or [[Ernest Shepard]]'s illustrations for ''[[Winnie the Pooh]]''.<ref name="nz">{{cite web | url=http://werewolf.co.nz/2009/07/classics-3/ | title=Classics: The Rabbits Wedding by Garth Williams | website=Werewolf | date=July 7, 2009 | access-date=May 12, 2011 | author=Campbell, Gordon | archive-date=April 21, 2019 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190421001114/http://werewolf.co.nz/2009/07/classics-3/ | url-status=dead }}</ref>|author=|title=|source=}}
His friendly, fuzzy baby animals populated a dozen [[Little Golden Books]].
[[Mel Gussow]] in ''[[The New York Times]]'' wrote, "He believed that books 'given, or read, to children can have a profound influence!' For that reason, he said, he used his illustrations to try to 'awaken something of importance ... humor, responsibility, respect for others, interest in the world at large!'"<ref name="times">{{cite news | url=https://www.nytimes.com/1996/05/10/arts/garth-williams-book-illustrator-dies-at-84.html | title=Garth Williams, Book Illustrator, Dies at 84 |newspaper=The New York Times | date=May 10, 1996 | access-date=May 12, 2011 | author=Gussow, Mel}}</ref>
==Early life==
{{More citations needed section|date=January 2021}}
Born in New York City in 1912, he was the son of Hamilton Williams and Florence Stuart Davis.<ref>{{cite book |title=Major Authors and Illustrators for Children and Young Adults: A Selection of Sketches from Something about the Author |date=1993 |publisher=Gale Research |isbn=978-0-8103-7702-8 |page=2478 |language=en}}</ref> Williams's father was a [[cartoonist]] for ''[[Punch (magazine)|Punch]]'' and his mother was a [[landscape painter]]. He described them by saying, "Everybody in my home was always either painting or drawing."<ref name="times" /> He grew up on farms in [[New Jersey]] and [[Canada]] until the family relocated to the [[United Kingdom]] in 1922, where his parents were from.
Williams studied [[architecture]] there, and worked for a time as an architect's assistant. When the [[Great Depression]] came, he made up his mind to be an artist instead of an architect. He began his studies at [[Westminster School of Art]] in 1929 and, in 1931, was awarded a four-year scholarship to the [[Royal College of Art]] where he created a sculpture that was awarded the [[British Prix de Rome]]. He continued his education at the [[British School at Rome]] in Germany and Italy, until the outbreak of World War II in Europe.
In London, he volunteered with the [[British Red Cross]] Civilian Defense ambulances, and helped collect the dead and injured from the streets. After a bomb blast vaporized a friend who had been walking next to him, he sent his wife and daughter to Canada, and reunited with them in New York in 1942.<ref name="hornbook">{{cite news | url=http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-13565804.html | title=Garth Williams after eighty | work=The Horn Book Magazine | date=March 1, 1993 | access-date=May 12, 2011 | author=Anderson, William}}{{dead link|date=August 2016}}</ref>
==Career==
{{More citations needed section|date=January 2021}}
[[File:Garth williams.jpg|thumb|An illustration from [[Charlotte's Web]] showing Williams' energetic line, his penchant for detail, emotion and action, as well as his use of texture and shading.]]
In the United States, Williams worked making [[lens (optics)|lens]]es at a war plant, applied for work as a [[camouflage]] artist, contributed war-effort posters to the British-American Art Center in New York, and brought his portfolio around to the major publishing houses. He drew for ''[[The New Yorker]]'' for a mutually unfulfilling period of time. Then, in 1945, he received his first commission as an illustrator, from editor [[Ursula Nordstrom]] of [[HarperCollins|Harper]]'s Department of Books for Boys and Girls. The story is that Nordstrom "told him she was expecting a manuscript that he might illustrate. By coincidence, when the manuscript arrived the author had pinned a note to it: 'Try Garth Williams'. The author was [[E. B. White]]; the book was ''Stuart Little''."<ref name="times" /> The Whites had wanted [[Robert Lawson (author)|Robert Lawson]] to work on the project, but had burned through eight illustrators. The book became a success with adults as well as children. Williams later said that seeing grownups on buses and trains reading ''Stuart Little'' persuaded him to continue as a freelance illustrator.<ref name="marcus">Marcus, Leonard S. (2008). ''Minders of Make-Believe''. New York: Houghton Mifflin. {{ISBN|0-395-67407-7}}.</ref>
Soon after, he began collaborating with [[Margaret Wise Brown]] with ''[[The Little Fur Family]]'', Harper's answer to [[Simon & Schuster]]'s ''[[Pat the Bunny]]''. Nordstrom knew that the book would be a success when a mother wrote to tell her that her little boy had held open his copy at the dinner table, and tried to feed it his supper.<ref name=marcus/> In all, Williams illustrated eleven of Brown's books.
In 1951 he illustrated ''Charlotte's Web'' (1952); his eldest child Fiona, who was a toddler when the family escaped [[the Blitz]], was his model for Fern Arable.<ref name=times/>
In the latter part of his life, Williams lived primarily in Marfil, a small town west of [[Guanajuato, Guanajuato|Guanajuato, Mexico]]. He was part of a colony of [[expatriates]] who built or rebuilt homes in the ruins of the silver mines of [[colonial Mexico]]. At 81, he estimated that he had illustrated 97 books.<ref name=hornbook/>
===''Little House'' illustrations (1953)===
{{More citations needed section|date=January 2021}}
Williams received the commission to illustrate the new ''Little House'' edition in about 1947. To know the worlds of Laura's childhood, Williams, who had never been west of the [[Hudson River]], traveled the [[American Midwest]] to the places [[Laura Ingalls Wilder|the Ingalls family]] had lived 70 years before, photographing and sketching landscapes, trees, birds and wildlife, buildings and towns.
<blockquote>The trip culminated in a search along the riverbank along [[Plum Creek (Redwood County, Minnesota)|Plum Creek]] where the family had once built their dugout home. Williams writes, in his 1953 account "I did not expect to find the house, but I felt certain that it would have left an indentation in the bank. A light rain did not help my search, and I was about to give up when ahead of me I saw exactly what I was looking for, a hollow in the east bank of Plum Creek. I felt very well rewarded, for the scene fitted Mrs Wilder's description perfectly...." [He] wanted to ... be able to see the house on Plum Creek ... as Laura would have done, as a happy, flower bedecked refuge from the elements, with the music of the nearby stream. Which is how he drew it.<ref name="nz" /></blockquote>
Ursula Nordstrom's initial plan was for Williams to produce eight oil paintings for each book, sixty-four in all. This proved to be not cost-efficient. Williams illustrated the ''Little House'' books with a simple pencil, charcoal, and ink. Much of his work was accomplished in Italy.<ref name=hornbook/>
Williams later illustrated the first edition of ''[[The First Four Years (novel)|The First Four Years]]'' (1971), which is commonly considered the last of nine books in the Little House series.
===''The Rabbits' Wedding'' controversy (1958)===
{{More citations needed section|date=January 2021}}
In 1958, Garth Williams wrote and illustrated a picture book that caused a small uproar: ''[[The Rabbits' Wedding]]''. Aimed at children aged 3 to 7, it depicted animals in a moonlit forest attending the wedding of a white rabbit to a black rabbit. In 1959, [[Alabama]] Senator [[E. O. Eddins]] and Alabama State Library Agency director [[Emily Wheelock Reed]] took the lead in a controversy over the book.<ref name="times obit">[https://www.nytimes.com/2000/05/29/us/emily-w-reed-89-librarian-in-59-alabama-racial-dispute.html "Emily W. Reed, 89, Librarian in '59 Alabama Racial Dispute"] [Obituary]. (May 29, 2000). ''The New York Times''</ref> Senator Eddins, with the support of the [[Citizens' Councils|White Citizens' Council]] and other segregationists, demanded that it be removed from all Alabama libraries because of its perceived themes of [[racial integration]] and [[interracial marriage]].<ref name="lead">Selby, M. (2012). "Librarians as Leaders". ''Feliciter'', 58 (5), 37</ref> Reed reviewed the book and, finding no objectionable content, determined it was her ethical duty to defend the book against an outright ban. A battle ensued between Reed and her supporters, and the segregationist faction in the legislature. In the end, the book was not banned outright, but rather placed on special reserve shelves in the state library agency-run facilities. Libraries that had purchased their own copies were not required to make this change.<ref name="right">Graham, P. (2002). ''A right to read: segregation and civil rights in Alabama's public libraries, 1900–1965'' (pp. 102–112). Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2002.</ref><ref>Sollors, W. (1996). ''Neither black nor white yet both: thematic explorations of interracial literature''. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 21.</ref>
About the controversy, Williams stated, "I was completely unaware that animals with white fur, such as white polar bears and white dogs and white rabbits, were considered blood relations of white beings. I was only aware that a white horse next to a black horse looks very picturesque." Williams said his story was not written for adults, who "will not understand it, because it is only about a soft furry love and has no hidden message of hate".<ref>{{Cite news | url=http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/files/1959_0522_mirror_cover.jpg | title='Racial Rabbits' Irk Alabamans |newspaper=Los Angeles Evening Mirror News | date=May 22, 1959 | access-date=May 12, 2011}}{{Dead link|date=August 2016}}</ref>
==Personal life==
Williams was married four times. The first three marriages ended in divorce; he remained in his fourth marriage until his death. He had children from each marriage, totaling five daughters and one son.
He met his first two wives while living in England. His first wife was Gunda Lambton (née von Davidson) a German artist and writer with whom he had two daughters. His second wife Dorothea (née Dessauer), formerly his children's nanny, was an Austrian Jewish artist whose affluent parents died in the Holocaust. He and Dorothea also had two daughters. A few years after their eventual divorce she died of a drug overdose.<ref name=":0" /><ref>{{Cite web |title=Dorothea Amalia Dessauer 1924-1965 - Ancestry® |url=https://www.ancestry.com/genealogy/records/dorothea-amalia-dessauer-24-8jhjj0 |access-date=2022-07-14 |website=www.ancestry.com |language=en-US}}</ref>
Williams met his third and fourth wives while living in Mexico. Four months after his second divorce in 1962, he married Alicia Rayas, his nineteen-year-old Mexican housekeeper. Several years later they had a son. His last marriage was to Leticia Vargas Arredondo, from a prominent family in Guanajuato. He and Leticia had a daughter together when he was sixty-six years old. His youngest daughter was 17 when Williams died.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book |last=Wallace |first=Elizabeth K. and James D. |title=Garth Williams, American Illustrator: A Life |publisher=Beaufort Books |year=2016 |isbn=978-0825307959 |language=English}}</ref><ref name=":1">{{Cite news |last=Gussow |first=Mel |date=1996-05-10 |title=Garth Williams, Book Illustrator, Dies at 84 |language=en-US |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1996/05/10/arts/garth-williams-book-illustrator-dies-at-84.html |access-date=2022-07-13 |issn=0362-4331}}</ref>
At 84 Williams died at his home in Marfil, and was buried in [[Aspen, Colorado]]. He had five daughters: Fiona and Bettina from his first marriage; Jessica and Estyn from his second; Dilys from his fourth; and a son, Dylan, from his third marriage.
For the last 40 years of his life Williams divided most of his time between a restored hacienda in Guanajuato and in his home in San Antonio, Texas.<ref name=":1" /><ref name=":0" />
==Techniques==
{{More citations needed section|date=January 2021}}
In a 1999 interview, Williams described his approach to illustrating stories by other writers. His initial reading of the material usually would suggest thirty or forty potential pictures. "To compose the pictures is very hard ... I look for all the action in the story; then I arrange forms and color. I always try to imagine what the author is seeing. Of course, I have to narrow down my ideas to the number of drawings I'm allowed, which might be as few as ten per book. I make a list of illustrations. When I see a picture, I write down the idea and a page number while I read the manuscript."<ref name="hornbook" />
Williams drew few straight lines. He used charcoal and graphite pencils, from fine to very soft, to illustrate the [[Little House books]]. The "youngest" book in the series, ''Little House in the Big Woods,'' is nearly lamplit in its coziness, almost an echo of the small-animal sensibilities of The Fur Family or his deeply colored [[Little Golden Books]]. He used pen and ink for ''[[The Cricket in Times Square]]'', the ''Rescuers'' books, ''Charlotte's Web'', and ''Stuart Little''. ''The Giant Golden Book of Elves and Fairies'', a 1951 anthology, is noteworthy for Williams' extensive use of colored pencil. In the Golden Books and Little Golden Books, he favored oil pastels, ink washes, and watercolor. ''The Rabbits' Wedding'' (1958), which employed a limited palette of only a few delicate colors, contained some of the best-reproduced examples of his ability to convey hair, hide, grass, and fur textures.
==Published books==
=== As writer and illustrator ===
{{div col|colwidth=18em|small=yes}}
* (1946). ''The Chicken Book: A Traditional Rhyme''. New York: Delacorte. {{ISBN|0-440-40600-5}}.
* (1951). ''Adventures of Benjamin Pink''. New York: Harper.
* (1952). ''Baby Animals''. New York: Simon & Schuster.
* (1953). ''Baby Farm Animals''. New York: Simon & Schuster.
* (1954). ''The Golden Animal ABC''. New York: Simon & Schuster (republished as ''Animal ABC'', [[Western Publishing|Golden Press]] (1957); ''My Big Animal ABC'', Golden Pleasure Books, London (1957); ''Bunnies' ABC'', [[Western Publishing]], [[Racine, Wisconsin]] (1985)).
* (1955). ''Baby's First Book''. New York: Simon & Schuster.
* (1958). ''[[The Rabbits' Wedding]]''. New York: Harper. {{ISBN|0-06-026495-0}}.
* (1986). ''Self-Portrait''. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co. {{ISBN|0-201-08314-0}}.
{{Div col end}}
=== With other writers ===
{{div col|colwidth=18em|small=yes}}
* Andrieux, Raymond (1945). ''Tux'n'Tails''. New York: Vanguard.
* [[Byrd Baylor|Baylor, Byrd]]. (1963). ''Amigo''.
* [[Margaret Wise Brown|Brown, Margaret Wise]]. (1946). ''Little Fur Family''. New York: Harper.
* Brown, Margaret Wise (1948). ''Wait 'til the Moon Is Full''.
* Brown, Margaret Wise (1951). ''Fox Eyes''.
* Brown, Margaret Wise (1952). ''Mister Dog: The Dog Who Belonged to Himself''.
* Brown, Margaret Wise (1953). ''The Sailor Dog''.
* Brown, Margaret Wise (1954). ''The Friendly Book''.
* Brown, Margaret Wise (1956). ''Home for a Bunny''.
* Brown, Margaret Wise (1956, Harper). Three Little Animals''.
* [[Dorothy Kunhardt|Kunhardt, Dorothy]]. (1949). ''Tiny Nonsense Stories''. New York: Simon and Schuster.
* Kunhardt, Dorothy (1949). ''Happy Valentine''.
* Kunhardt, Dorothy (1949). ''Mrs. Sheep's Little Lamb''.
* Kunhardt, Dorothy (1949). ''The Two Snow Bulls''.
* Kunhardt, Dorothy (1949). ''Roger Mouse's Wish''.
* Kunhardt, Dorothy (1949). ''The Wonderful Silly Picnic''.
* Kunhardt, Dorothy (1949). ''The Naughty Little Guest''.
* Kunhardt, Dorothy (1949). ''Uncle Quack''.
* Kunhardt, Dorothy (1949). ''April Fool!''
* Kunhardt, Dorothy (1949). ''The Cowboy Kitten''.
* Kunhardt, Dorothy (1949). ''The Easter Bunny''.
* Kunhardt, Dorothy (1948). ''Shame on You, Baby Whale!''
* Kunhardt, Dorothy (1948). [[Good Housekeeping]] collaborations
* [[Natalie Savage Carlson|Carlson, Natalie Savage]]. ''The Family Under the Bridge''.
* Carlson, Natalie Savage. ''A Happy Orpheline''.
* Carlson, Natalie Savage (1959). ''A Brother for the Orphelines''.
* [[Russell Hoban|Hoban, Russell]] Bedtime for Frances.
*[[Randall Jarrell|Jarrell, Randall]] (1964) The Gingerbread Rabbit.
* Le Gallienne, Eva (1949) ''Flossie and Bossie''
*Leader, Pauline 1946 'A Room for the Night' Vanguard.
* [[Jennie D Lindquist|Lindquist, Jennie D]] (1955) The Golden Name Day.
* Lindquist, Jennie D (1959). The Little Silver House.
* [[Else Holmelund Minarik|Minarik, Else H.]] (1963). ''The Little Giant Girl and the Elf Boy''.
* [[Jack Prelutsky|Prelutsky, Jack]] ''Ride a Purple Pelican''.
* Prelutsky, Jack (1990). ''Beneath a Blue Umbrella''.
* [[Lilian Moore|Moore, Lilian]] (1957). ''My First Counting Book''.
* [[Miriam Norton|Norton, Miriam]] (1954). ''The Kitten Who Thought He Was a Mouse''.
* [[Damon Runyon|Runyon, Damon]] (1946). ''In Our Town: Twenty Seven Slices of Life''. New York: Creative Age Press.
* [[George Selden (author)|Selden, George]] New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
* Selden, George (1960). ''[[The Cricket in Times Square]]''.
* Selden, George (1981). ''Chester Cricket's Pigeon Ride''.
* Selden, George (1983). ''Chester Cricket's New Home''.
* Selden, George (1986). ''Harry Kitten and Tucker Mouse''.
* Selden, George (1974). ''Harry Cat's Pet Puppy''.
* Selden, George (1969). ''Tucker's Countryside''.
* Selden, George (1987). ''The Old Meadow''.
* [[Margery Sharp|Sharp, Margery]]. ''The Rescuers: A Fantasy''.
* Sharp, Margery. ''Miss Bianca''.
* Sharp, Margery (1966). ''Miss Bianca in the Salt Mines''.
* Sharp, Margery (1963). ''The Turret''.
* Stoltz, Mary. ''Emmet's Pig''.
* Stoltz, Mary. ''King Emmett the Second''.
* Wahl, Jan (1968). ''Push Kitty''.
* Werner, Jane (ed.) (1950). ''The Tall Book of Make-Believe''.
* Werner, Jane (ed.) (1951). ''The Giant Golden Book of Elves and Fairies''.
* [[E.B. White|White, E. B.]] (1945). ''Stuart Little''.
* White, E. B. (1952). ''Charlotte's Web''.
* [[Laura Ingalls Wilder|Wilder, Laura Ingalls]] (1953). The first eight [[Little House on the Prairie|Little House]] books. New York: Harper.
* Wilder, Laura Ingalls, with a foreword by Roger McBride (1971). ''The First Four Years''. New York: Harper & Row.
* [[Charlotte Zolotow|Zolotow, Charlotte]] (1957). ''Over and Over''.
* Zolotow, Charlotte. ''Do You Know What I'd Do?''
* Zolotow, Charlotte (1963). ''The Sky Was Blue''.
{{Div col end}}
== See also ==
* {{Portal inline|Children's literature}}
==References==
{{reflist}}
==Further reading==
* {{Cite book|last=Wheeler|first=Jill C.|title=Garth Williams|publisher=Abdo Publishing|year=2005|isbn=978-1-59197-723-0|series=Children's Illustrators|___location=Edina, Minnesota}} A biography for children.
* {{Cite book|title=Something about the Author|publisher=[[Gale (publisher)|Gale]]|year=1991|isbn=978-0-8103-2276-9|editor-last=Olendorf|editor-first=Donna|volume=66|___location=Detroit, Michigan|pages=228–235|chapter=Garth M. Williams}}
* {{Cite magazine|last=Marcus|first=Leonard S. Marcus|author-link=Leonard S. Marcus|date=February 23, 1990|title=Garth Williams: An Interview|url=https://archive.publishersweekly.com/?a=d&d=BG19900223&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN%7ctxRV----------1|magazine=[[Publishers Weekly]] |volume=237 |issue=8 |page=201 |access-date=April 10, 2021}}
* In 1986, the Laura Ingalls Wilder Memorial Society of [[De Smet, South Dakota]] created a video, ''Back after 39 Years: Garth Williams Re-visits De Smet, S.D.'' This is a taped lecture in which Williams describes his work on the Little House books.{{Citation needed|date=April 2021}}
==External links==
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20060411071149/http://www.thesantis.com/who_who/illustrators___authors.htm#Williams Illustrators and Authors] [https://web.archive.org/web/20090919063830/http://www.thesantis.com/main.html Collecting Little Golden Books]
* ''LIFE''. July 2, 1971. [https://books.google.com/books?id=OUAEAAAAMBAJ&dq=%22garth+williams%22&pg=PA12 "A Fine Way Back to Our Prairie Past"]. This article reproduces the original watercolor-pencil illustrations for the covers of three of the Wilder books.
* [https://estynhulbert.com/blogs/blog/my-grandfather-illustrator-garth-williams-1 My grandfather, illustrator Garth Williams]
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Williams, Garth}}
[[Category:1912 births]]
[[Category:1996 deaths]]
[[Category:20th-century American artists]]
[[Category:Alumni of the Royal College of Art]]
[[Category:American children's book illustrators]]
[[Category:Artists from Guanajuato]]
[[Category:Artists from New York City]]
[[Category:Prix de Rome (Britain) winners]]
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