William Heath Robinson 1872-1944

Though a highly versatile artist, William Heath Robinson (1872-1944) was dubbed the Gadget King in his own lifetime, and has remained synonymous with ridiculously complicated machines and inventions. This 2011 comprehensive catalogue, which accompanied a selling exhibition, explores this aspect of Heath Robinson's achievement with breadth and imagination - placing his ingenious cartoons in the context of his work of an illustrator, with which he even rivalled Arthur Rackham. Heath Robinson's cartoons reflect a very English response to progress, and particularly the technological developments of the early twentieth century, in both war and peace. They portray his compatriots as engaged in highly unlikely tasks, which they accomplish in an earnest and painstaking manner. They also parody the efficiency of the Huns and the Nazis in the two world wars, and the obsession with the self-help manual that developed in the inter-war decades. His love of detail and his feeling for landscape provide a believable context for the most bizarre activities, and make the drawings all the more entertaining.